The Empty Home
by chai4anne
Summary: Sherlock would always be haunted by memories of one particular case. The first body, its once-so-familiar features blurred by the passing of time and death, moved him more than he would ever have expected. But the worst was the skeleton he uncovered later, bits of hair and clothes still clinging to it—which had no effect on him whatever, until he looked up and saw John's face.
1. Chapter 1

The Empty Home

by Chai

Author's Note:

This is meant to take place shortly after "The Hounds of Baskerville" and before "The Reichenbach Fall."

Fans of the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories will recognize the ones I've mashed up and mixed together to create the plot for this. Sometimes the mashing and mixing have produced fairly drastic changes - not everything goes the way it does in the originals, even when characters' names are the same. I hope no one will be too offended by the liberties I've taken with the originals here.

I'm grateful for Ariane DeVere's wonderfully detailed transcripts of all the episodes, particularly "The Hounds of Baskerville," and for the discussion, encouragement, and suggestions that Fang's Fawn has so generously shared with me. I couldn't have written this without them.

Casefic, Friendship, No slash

All the usual disclaimers apply.

The Empty Home

by Chai

For the rest of his life, Sherlock would be haunted by memories from one particular case. He tried at first to delete them, but after many failures had to admit he couldn't because he didn't really want to: they had opened something in him that he found torturous but oddly precious, and he was unwilling to lose the reminders of its existence, however painful he found them to contemplate.

One was the first body, its once-so-familiar features blurred by the passing of time and the processes of death, lying huddled on the carpet in the tiny, windowless, locked room. The skeleton that he uncovered later, with its bits of hair and scraps of clothing still clinging here and there, would have been infinitely more horrifying to most people but had no effect on Sherlock whatsoever - until he looked up and saw John's face.

000000

Once he had realized that he couldn't delete even selected pieces of the case from his mind palace, Sherlock thought about it often, and sometimes wondered what sort of title John would have given it if he'd ever blogged about it. "The Mystery of the Sealed Room"? Dull. "The Case of the Retired-Colours Man" or "The Two 'Hosh Courtyards of the Coptic Patriarch'"? Either would cover parts of the investigation nicely, but neither could account for the whole. "The Adventure of the Unexcavated Pillbox" would go straight to the heart of things, but to refer to that terrible evening so lightheartedly seemed distasteful even to Sherlock; it certainly would to John.

Probably John would have chosen something more laconic, like "The House of No Gables." That had the virtue of being accurate, considerably more accurate than the name displayed ostentatiously on the hip-roofed old farmhouse's gateposts, "The Gables" - which Sherlock, with an odd pang he found he couldn't entirely defend himself against, hoped had been the invention of some architecturally-ignorant estate-agent, rather than its most recent owners.

"The House of No Gables" also had a certain literary suggestiveness that was entirely appropriate to the case. Sherlock doubted that many of John's readers would catch the allusion to the gothic novel or the film that had been made from it, but it was the sort of joke John himself might very well make under the circumstances. He was more literate than his blog suggested, was fond of old movies — he and Sherlock had actually watched that one together once - and the choice would be typical of the mordant sense of humour he tended to deploy in difficult situations. (This was not lighthearted at all. Ella Thompson would no doubt have called it a distancing-mechanism.)

But John, for obvious reasons, never blogged about the case, and the name Sherlock eventually gave it, though only in the privacy of his own thoughts, was simply "The Empty Home." As a physical description this was far from accurate: the house was not at all empty when Sherlock encountered it, but as well and expensively furnished as one would expect of the country home of an MP who had recently ascended to the giddy heights of the Cabinet. And yet, after learning what had happened there, Sherlock could never think of it as anything else.

That was as fanciful and sentimental as any phrase John would have come up with. But for this case Sherlock allowed himself to make an exception to his usual rule and indulge his feelings a little. He couldn't really help it. Even Mycroft, when he found out about the business - and of course Mycroft _did_ find out, in spite of Sherlock's savagely-best efforts to keep him in the dark - had been disconcerted. Shaken. Perhaps even - Sherlock knew his brother too well not to detect it - somewhat grieved. Caring was not an advantage, but only a fool would believe that either Holmes brother was entirely immune to it, and the story of that particular house was able to touch even the Ice Man's supposedly Siberian and inaccessible heart.

As for John - well, that was only to be expected. All Army stoicism on the outside, of course. But the two brothers kept a very careful eye on him afterwards, and were relentless in making sure that no whiff of the case-behind-the-case ever entered the press.

000000

It all began on a gloomy day not long after their return from Dartmoor. The atmosphere in the flat that morning could only be described as strained. It had been raining relentlessly all week and Sherlock had been cooped up with no case to occupy his mind. The fact that the cooping-up part was entirely his own choice made no difference to his mood; he was grumpy and, though he would never have admitted it, more than a little depressed. John was also out of sorts. The two men sat in their armchairs opposite one another, the fire flickering beside them, computers open on their laps, and jabbed every few minutes with increasing irritation at their phones.

John's had been buzzing all morning with texts he didn't seem to want. Sherlock's, on the other hand, stayed relentlessly silent in spite of the fact that he was texting frequently himself and waiting impatiently for a reply.

John's phone buzzed again.

"Would you turn that thing _off?_ " Sherlock snapped. "It's _intensely_ annoying."

"Not the only thing around here that's intensely annoying," his flatmate muttered. He switched the sound off as asked, however. Sherlock glanced up at him for a moment, blinking, before apparently returning his attention to his own screen. In fact it was now entirely on John, every neuron of his high-speed brain on alert as he processed his friend's response.

It had been clear to him for some time that John had not yet entirely forgiven him for the incident a fortnight ago in the Baskerville lab. The doctor had been noticeably cool towards his flatmate since their return, withdrawn and sarcastic. Sherlock had concluded that John thought he had crossed a line by trying to slip a terror-inducing hallucinogenic drug into his coffee and then locking him into a lab and watching the results.

That he should be angry about this was, Sherlock thought, quite unfair. The detective had needed information; drugging John had been the only way to get it. Warning John that he was about to be drugged might have skewed the results. And the experiment itself should have been harmless: Sherlock had researched the hallucinogen carefully and been able to say with absolute confidence that John would suffer no long-term effects whatever once he had excreted it.

The only difficulty with that line of reasoning was that it had - possibly - been . . . at least partially . . . lacking. The drug _should_ have been harmless, and on most people would have been. However, Sherlock now realized that he had failed to allow for the possibility that John's former therapist might not be quite as incompetent as he had always assumed. He had not considered that, as a result of John's experiences in Afghanistan, his friend might in fact actually have developed some form of post-traumatic stress disorder - one that, while it had clearly gone dormant once John began chasing across London after criminals, nevertheless remained lurking invisibly in his brain, ready to be roused to life again by some new trauma.

Having a gun held to his head and his girlfriend tied up in General Shan's murder machine apparently hadn't registered in John's mind as traumatic enough to make a difference. Neither had the experience of being kidnapped by a psychopathic criminal mastermind and strapped into an explosives-laden vest, even though the criminal in question had shown every willingness in the very recent past to blow little old ladies and innocent bystanders to bits. Sherlock himself had had a most unsettling reaction to that scene by the pool, one he was quite anxious that no one else should ever know about. As far as he could tell, however, John had slept easily that night and every night afterwards - until two weeks ago.

John had said nothing about what was happening, of course, but a flat mate could hardly have missed it even if he hadn't been an observational and deductive genius. At first Sherlock told himself that he was simply _interested:_ the continuance of the drug's after-effects for a longer period of time than he had originally anticipated was a scientific fact that needed to be observed and understood. But when John continued to wake repeatedly each night in obvious distress (Sherlock could hear him from both his bedroom and the sitting room at the front of the house) the detective became conscious that his thoughts were turning to something closer to concern _._

As the effects of these night-terrors became increasingly apparent and John started to limp painfully around the flat and have difficulty using his left hand, Sherlock's _concern_ began to be replaced by a more active _worry -_ which he found annoying, as it interfered with his concentration on the experiments with which he was trying to occupy his mind until an interesting case came up.

And along with both the concern and the worry there was something else distracting him, a train of thought that he kept trying to delete as _useless_ and _irrelevant,_ only to find that it wouldn't be deleted but kept coming back, more insidiously intent on disturbing him than before.

This was beyond annoying. Only idiots wasted time blaming themselves for their mistakes. The thing to do was to focus on finding a solution and then things would return to the comfortable, pleasant, and even enjoyable state they had been in before Henry Knight ever knocked on the door of 221B Baker Street.

The trouble was that Sherlock could think of only one solution to the problem: an interesting case. And it had to be _interesting_ in a very specific set of ways. Intellectual excitement alone would not suffice; a certain element of physical risk was required, enough to bring John's adrenalin back up to the level which had so satisfactorily freed him from the effects of psychological distress in the past. At the same time, the case could not be so dangerous that John might get into a situation in which Sherlock would be unable to keep him safe. That, the detective had concluded after the incident at the pool, was simply unacceptable.

(Mycroft might think that Sherlock never learned from his mistakes, but he was wrong. In the front room of his mind palace Sherlock kept a list of things he really didn't want to have to go through again. As the most recent addition, nightmares about John in a Semtex vest now topped rehab, boarding school, and - Irene Adler's not-unpleasant attentions notwithstanding - sex.)

Unfortunately, London's criminals had not obliged. Lestrade, despite Sherlock's regular requests sent by text every twelve minutes for the past six days, had not obliged. Even _Mycroft -_ to his considerable disgust, Sherlock had sunk low enough to text his brother describing what he wanted - had not obliged.

" _Nothing!"_ Sherlock muttered, checking his phone for the umpteenth time. At the same moment, John let out an exasperated, "Oh, for God's _sake!_ " and threw his own phone across the room.

It landed harmlessly on the sofa cushion. This appeared to annoy John further. He stood up and stalked into the kitchen, huffing under his breath and doing his best to hide the fact that his right leg hurt to walk on again.

"Am I disturbing your concentration?" Sherlock inquired, acidly - which meant both, "You are disturbing mine" (which was what he wanted John to hear) and (what was really in his mind), "Why are you still so angry?"

He was unsure what the gruffness in John's voice indicated when he answered, "No. It's Harry."

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. He had learned from experience that "Drinking again?" was not a comment likely to make Harry's brother happy at the best of times, so he refrained from making it.

John scowled at the kettle, which was shaking noticeably in his left hand. He transferred it to his right one and turned the water on before answering Sherlock's expectant silence.

"It's that damned blog of hers. She's been at me about it all week, asking if I've looked at it yet, and what do I think of it, and why hasn't everyone on the planet linked to it by now, and what should she be doing to get more hits. She seems to think it should have gone viral already! I think she's hoping she can use it as a springboard for a best-selling memoir - "My Life On the Rocks" or something, God help us all. And now her computer's got something wrong with it and she's fussing about that."

"What have you been telling her?"

"About the computer or the blog?"

"The blog, naturally. I assume your medical degrees have not yet made you a qualified computer technician."

"Nothing. I haven't read the damn thing yet."

"Really? I'm surprised. I'd have thought that would be just your sort of thing."

John gave him a baleful look. Sherlock steepled his fingers under his chin.

"Interesting," he observed.

"You must be joking."

Sherlock wasn't joking, but it wasn't Harry Watson's new hobby he found interesting so much as her brother's reaction to it. Even taking John's current sleeplessness and irritability into account, his evident failure to respond to Harry's questions was surprising. Sherlock knew John found her difficult to be around and would sometimes let himself ignore her texts or calls for a day or so, but he never left it longer than that and always ended up bailing her out when she wanted him to. He had, in Sherlock's opinion, a quite ridiculously soft heart when it came to his sister - or, of course, just about anyone else.

John was obviously finding her more irritating than usual. Sherlock knew very little about Harry Watson beyond her drinking problems, but he'd always assumed she was, in a small way, John's Mycroft - lacking Mycroft's overpowering intellect and far-reaching surveillance powers, of course, but nevertheless annoying simply by dint of being an overbearing older sibling, with the frustrating stupidity and emotionalism of the alcoholic thrown in to boot.

But Harry was actually committed to sobriety at the moment, something John invariably felt he had to support. That was the point of the blog. Harry had decided that therapy might be good for her. She'd asked John for a reference and was now Ella Thompson's patient. And Ella had handed down her usual prescription: "Write a blog."

Harry had called John to tell him about it the night they got back from Devon. John had stared at his phone rather blankly after she'd rung off. "Harry's going to write a blog," he'd said. "To help her stay off the booze."

"A _blog?_ What could _she_ possibly have to say?" Sherlock had demanded indignantly. When John didn't answer, he'd found himself expostulating further on a subject that had frequently annoyed him: "Why is it that every Tom, Dick, and now Harry imagines the rest of the world should be fascinated by the tiresome details of their tedious little lives, or the inane reflex opinions generated by the vestigial reptilian stem-cells that pass for their brains? When they have no knowledge or expertise, nothing to write about except their food, their gardens, their knitting, or their cats -"

He took a breath, trying to think of something else denunciatory he could say about the common or garden-variety blogger.

"Dunno," John said. "Think I'll go for a walk. I could do with some fresh air before bed."

The fresh air might have cleared his sister out of his mind, but not the Baskerville hound. He had woken in the middle of the night with a horrified cry. The sounds travelled easily down the heating pipes of the old house; with his keen hearing Sherlock could make out quite clearly the words " _dog_ ," " _monster,_ " and " _run!_ " as his flatmate gasped and flailed his way back to consciousness.

Now, two weeks later, John put the kettle down and said again, "Think I'll go for a walk."

"Still raining," Sherlock pointed out. "Quite hard." But John was already clumping down the stairs as quickly as his bad-again leg would allow.

He nearly ran down the elderly man standing on the step outside, one arthritic hand reaching for the knocker. Thrown off-balance himself, John nevertheless managed to grab his victim before the old man could actually fall, then steadied him, and - after a series of flustered apologies, questions, and introductions - assisted him back up the seventeen steps to the flat.

"Major Amberley, Sherlock," he said, ushering the visitor into the sitting room, where Sherlock had just sent his sixteenth impatient text of the day to Lestrade and his sixth to Mycroft. "He's here about a case."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

Other than his tie, the only traces of Major Amberley's former career that either John or Sherlock could detect were his hair and moustache, which, though thinning badly, were trimmed with military precision. They were both a yellowed white. The man had been tall once - taller than Sherlock - but was stooped and frail-looking now, leaning heavily on a cane. He was neatly if somewhat baggily dressed in an ancient tweed suit and regimental tie - the suit had obviously been bought years ago for a younger and more muscular man - but, in spite of his evident attempt at tidiness, he brought with him the unmistakable odours of mothballs and old age. The mottled hand he extended to Sherlock as he hobbled into the room was twisted with arthritis, and trembling as badly as John's.

John gave Sherlock a look that said, "Stand up, for God's sake," and after a moment's consideration Sherlock put down his phone, set his computer on the floor, and unfolded himself from his chair to take the Major's hand. Shaking and arthritic as it was, the strength that remained in the old man's grip surprised him.

"An honour," the Major said. "An honour." His voice was weak, hoarse, and, like his hand, trembled. "I had no intention of troubling you, sir, but I'm delighted to meet you. You have a great mind."

"Thank you," Sherlock said, gravely. "How may I help you?" John narrowed his eyes at him, then realized that their visitor was unlikely to recognize in the detective's manner the purring satisfaction of a cat presented with a bowl of cream. There was nothing like praise for bringing out Sherlock's better manners. He had them, John knew; he just couldn't be bothered to use them most of the time.

"Oh, not you, sir. Not you. It's Captain Watson here I've come to see."

Sherlock's eyebrows shot up.

"Really?" he said. "I thought you said this was about a _case._ " This was accompanied by a chilling glance at John.

"It is, sir, it is - but this affair is more up the Captain's alley than yours, I believe, Mr. Holmes. It's to do with my museum, you see. I keep a small museum of military artefacts in my home in Lewisham, you know - well, no, of course, there's no reason you should know that -"

Sherlock would dearly have loved to announce the address and postcode of the man's "museum," but he had in fact never heard of it, and could glean no further hint of its whereabouts from the major's coat and trousers (thirty years old and, though not worn regularly, showing their age; recently cleaned and pressed, presumably by the Major himself, as the iron had not been held in a steady hand, and the cleaning had missed several small stains - tea, ink, and something greasy, probably gravy) or shoes (brogues: cheap, elderly, the polish recently but unsuccessfully applied over many scuffs and wrinkles - result of that trembling hand and poor eyesight, no doubt, not lack of effort or military discipline; mud on soles indicating travel by bus, not Tube, from south-east London, but allowing for no more precise deductions as to origin). So he had to content himself with straightening up to his full height, which put him several inches over the stooped old man, and saying,

"Ah. I see. Well, don't let me trouble you any further, Major. I'll leave you and -" he hesitated for the briefest split-second over the unfamiliar title -" _Captain_ Watson to discuss your business in peace." The cream had soured. The cat withdrew its nose from the bowl, tail lashing with offended dignity. Sherlock scooped up his computer and phone and stalked towards his room.

"Sherlock," John growled as he swept past. "I'm sure the Major would be very happy to hear your opinion on his case."

"Oh, of course, of course," the Major bleated, looking from one man to the other and blinking with - embarrassment? confusion? "I simply assumed that - well, I would never have thought to trouble you with my little business, Mr. Holmes. But I am a great reader of Captain Watson's blog, and when the police refused - outright _refused,_ you understand - to do anything more to investigate my problem, or even to come to my home again; when they said . . . when they said . . . Well, I assure you, sirs, that I have _no_ wish to be a nuisance to anyone, and I believe I am still in sufficient possession of my faculties to know what I am talking about when I say what I say, and I say that I served in Her Majesty's Army, and before that in the Army of His Majesty King George VI, and I believe I am entitled to the same respect and services from the Metropolitan Police as any other resident of this city. I have had to make a number of calls because there have been a number of incidents; if there had not been, I would not have called. My museum is _not_ a 'roomful of dusty old rubbish'; all of my pieces have distinct historic value, while my collection of retired regimental colours – well, _reproductions,_ to be precise, hand-made _reproductions_ of retired colours -"

"In other words," Sherlock put in, impatiently, "something has gone missing."

"That is correct, sir. Several things, on several occasions. It is true that I did actually find two of the pieces again, after the police had visited - which was most mortifying, I assure you. I can't help but think now that it might have been better had I _not_ reported these facts, but I assumed that the Metropolitan Police would wish to be able to discontinue their search for the culprit and complete their reports; and in any case, it would have been dishonourablenot to tell them of my error - cowardly, and _dishonest,_ even -"

"I think," Sherlock interrupted, pulling his phone out of his pocket again and making, John thought, an unnecessarily dramatic show of consulting it, "that this case, indeed, must be yours, John. There's another matter which requires my urgent attention."

This time John made no effort to stop him as he swept out of the room and shut his bedroom door decisively behind him. John rubbed a hand over his head and thought regretfully of the solitary walk he'd been hoping would ease the jackhammer pounding behind his temples and sweep the fog and cobwebs from his tired mind. On the upside, it was, he supposed, progress of a kind that Sherlock had bothered with the charade of the phone at all; he might easily have told the man he was a tedious old fool and indicated his disinterest by sprawling on the sofa and burying himself in his computer again, right in front of their visitor.

"Sit down, Major Amberley, please," he said, gesturing to the sofa. "Let me get you something to drink and then I want to hear all about it."

0000000

Half an hour later he was rapping on Sherlock's door.

"I'm going to run down to Lewisham with the Major," he said, when eventually Sherlock grunted that he could come in. The detective was, as John expected, curled up on his bed with his laptop, looking sulky.

"Waste of time," Sherlock snorted. "Alzheimer's."

"Possibly, yes. Early stages, though, if that's the problem at all."

" _If?_ "

"Yes, Dr. Holmes, _if._ I'm not certain that's the problem. In any case, I want to take a look at his living situation, see that he's getting what he needs to be all right there. I'll probably drop in on Harry after and try to work out what's gone wrong with her computer."

"So you _are_ a tech now?"

"Somebody's got to do it. And it's on my way."

Sherlock yawned.

"If you must," he said. "Pick up some milk on the way back, will you? We're almost out."

"You lazy bugger. It would do you good to get some fresh air, you know, and a little exercise."

"Over-rated. And it's raining."

John always found it harder to be patient with his flat mate when he was tired, and he was very tired now. So his voice came out more harshly than he intended when he snapped, "Oh, for God's sake, Sherlock! I'm not your dogsbody. Get it your bloody _self!_ "

A few minutes later he and the Major were on a bus headed, via a slow and circuitous route, to Lewisham, John having had no difficulty in choosing the tedium of an hour-long bus trip over the faster but more expensive Tube and DLR, if that would avoid the sacrifice of any more of what he suspected must be the very limited funds in the Major's pocket - or, worse, of the old man's dignity, if John tried to pay the higher fares himself.

An hour after John and the Major had left, Sherlock's phone let out a sigh. He seized it eagerly.

 _Meet me at 5 Astor Mews, Chelsea, asap. GL._

The smile almost cracked his face in half as he exploded off the bed and through the kitchen, shouting for John. It was only when he saw the tea things on the table that he remembered John had gone out. He jerked his phone impatiently from his pocket and texted him:

 _Meet me Chelsea 5 Astor Mews asap. Lestrade's got a case. SH._

Then he slipped into his coat and ran happily down the stairs.

000000

"Well, here we are," the old man said, closing the door behind them and ushering John into the front room of the flat. "It isn't much, of course. Nothing like the Imperial War Museum. But —"

A slow smile was spreading across John's face.

"This is remarkable," he said. "Really quite remarkable."

The Major huffed with pleasure.

"You're much too kind. It's a very small collection, I know. But putting these things together has given me great satisfaction over the years, and when I retired I thought I might as well make them available to the public now, instead of just keeping them to myself and donating them to the I.W.M. when I push off."

"That's very generous of you."

"Not at all, not at all. Just a very great pleasure."

The Major's museum occupied the front rooms of a rather shabby Victorian row house on a quiet street off the Ladywell Road. The walls were hung with flags and banners, the floor crowded with low bookcases and glass-topped tables containing illustrated books on military history and a wide variety of military memorabilia—belts, boots, buckles, shoulder-tags, ribbons, medals, and old photographs, among other things.

"Where did you ever get the colours?" John asked. "They're usually kept in the regimental museums, aren't they?"

"Yes, yes, quite so. These aren't originals, I'm afraid - just reproductions. My wife made the earlier ones, and then I took it up after she died. I can't manage it any more, I'm afraid, but I used to find it quite relaxing."

John smiled. The Major was by no means the only man he'd met who enjoyed needlework. One of his old teachers from St. Bart's had said it was the only way he'd found to keep his hands happy after retiring from surgery. He couldn't imagine it himself, but perhaps, if he hadn't lost the fine-motor skills in his left hand to that Afghan bullet, and had been able to move on from the profession at sixty-five instead of thirty-five. . . .

"They're wonderful," he said, brushing the self-pitying thought aside. "Utterly convincing. I really thought they must be originals. The colour, the details - even the way you've made the older ones look faded. They're quite beautiful."

The Major beamed.

"That's the original standard of the Fifth Regiment of Foot, there," he said. "The ancestor of your own regiment, I believe, sir."

"Yes," John said, surprised. "I was RAMC, of course, but I was attached to the Northumberland Fusiliers."

"The Fifth Platoon?"

"That's right. How on earth - ?"

"I'm afraid I'm what my great-grandchildren would call a 'fan' of yours, sir. They gave me one of these new-fangled tablets last year, and when I stumbled across your blog - well, I was hooked. Your military background interested me, of course, so I did a little research. You're far too modest in that blog, you know. The things your platoon was doing -"

"I only came along as their medic, sir."

"Their battle surgeon, you mean. A unit like the Fifth Platoon could hardly make do with less. The kinds of missions they undertake don't allow for immediate evacuation of the wounded to a field hospital, now do they? And they're too highly trained for the Army to care to lose any of them unnecessarily. There aren't many men with your qualifications who'd be willing to take on an assignment like that."

John flushed and shook his head. The Major looked at him sternly.

"Don't attempt to deny it, Captain. I've been a student of our forces all my life, and I still have a few old friends who'll tell me a good story when I want to hear one. You're a fine man, Captain Watson, and you served with a fine unit. That assault on the Taliban hideout in the Khyber — remarkable stuff. They'd have lost far more men if you hadn't been with them that day — and I understand you were injured yourself through most of it, before that last bullet put you right out for good. You should have had the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross for that. Or higher."

"Sir, really, I—" John's face was scarlet.

"But I'm embarrassing you. My apologies. I'm a garrulous old man who doesn't always remember to think before he talks. All the same, sir, I'm honoured to make your acquaintance, and by your willingness to look into this business of my missing medals for me."

"It's medals you're missing, then, is it, sir?" John grasped eagerly at the change of subject.

"I'm afraid so, yes."

"Your own, sir?"

"No, no, a much more important set than mine. You know how the value of these things has risen over the years, and now, with people selling them on the internet — well, they can command quite extraordinary prices, if they were awarded to a well-known figure or if they come with a good story, something the buyer likes. You have perhaps heard of the soldier who sold his decorations recently for £100,000?"

"Yes," John said. "So he could look after his family, I believe."

"Quite so. A noble motive, though I can't say I altogether approve. I consider it disrespectful to Her Majesty to sell the honours she has given, however pressing the immediate need might seem to be. It's also a great mistake, something the soldier or his family may well come to regret. In my opinion, decorations should only be sold when the soldier himself and his immediate descendants are no longer with us. Which is why -"

His voice broke off and he looked away from John, casting his eyes around the room before dropping them to the cabinet in front of them.

"Why -?" John prompted.

The old man sighed and thrummed on the glass top of the cabinet with his arthritic fingers.

"I have always tried to maintain the strictest standards when buying for my collection," he said. "I've done everything within my power to ascertain that the medals I have purchased are those that have already passed out of the family that should rightfully have been cherishing them — and that they have passed by honest means."

"I'm sure you have, sir."

"Yes, I have tried. But . . . . Well. I learned not long ago that I had, in fact, been less careful than I had supposed when obtaining two of the pieces in my collection. I should like to return them to the family to whom they should still, in my opinion, belong. They are worth, I believe, a considerable amount. A great deal more than the medal that misguided young soldier sold."

He paused and looked sadly around the room again. John waited patiently, but when nothing more appeared to be forthcoming he asked, "And those are the missing medals?"

The Major nodded.

"I've called the police, of course. But as I told you and Mr. Holmes, they are not interested in the case. It is true that I have asked for their help in the past and then discovered the missing items amongst my things, but I do not think that can be the case this time. I have searched thoroughly through everything - _everything -_ here and I still cannot find them. I believe they have been taken."

"Have you seen any signs of a break-in?"

"No, nothing. But there was a gentleman who visited the museum the other day. I left him alone in the room while I went to take the kettle off - I had just put it on when he rang the bell - and I'm very much afraid that he took them then."

"You noticed they were gone after he left?"

"Not immediately, no. It was only yesterday that I noticed they were missing. And then I remembered who he was."

"You knew him?"

"I don't know his name. I suppose he gave it to me once - or gave me _a_ name, in any case, whether it was really his or not - but I can no longer recall it. Believe me, I have tried. You see, my record book is also missing."

"Your record book?"

"I keep records, of course, of every purchase I make. I always have. I keep them here." He tugged open a drawer in the large, old-fashioned oak desk that stood in a corner of the room, and John saw a series of ledgers filed spine-up, each labelled clearly with a series of dates. "That's why I'm certain the medals were taken, because the record book for the year I bought them is no longer here either, and how could I possibly have misplaced both things at the same time?"

"That would be -" John ran his finger over the books - "1983-85?"

"That's right."

"You don't remember this man's name, but you said you knew who he was?"

"Yes. I have always had a poor memory for names, but an excellent one for faces. I did not recognize him right away—he has changed considerably with age, of course, as do we all—but when I realized the medals were missing, I remembered. He was the man I bought them from, twenty-seven years ago."

John raised his eyebrows.

" _That,_ " he said, "is certainly suggestive. Can you tell me more about him?"

"Yes indeed. But you can't be very comfortable, standing about here. If you would just come back to my kitchen, sir, and let me make you some tea, I'll tell you everything I can."

000000

Sherlock spent the taxi-ride to Astor Mews texting John repeatedly and feeling increasingly annoyed when he didn't reply. A good deal of his annoyance was directed at the Major. Really, the decrepit old fool could hardly have chosen a worse moment to come doddering into 221B and attracting John's sympathies, dragging him away just before Sherlock's efforts finally paid off and Lestrade coughed up something _interesting_ for them to do. But why wasn't John answering? He could hardly be in the Tube still. His phone had been working perfectly well all morning, and the battery should have been fine; John would have charged it overnight. He never forgot.

At first Sherlock had assumed that John's orderly habits were a result of his military experience, but he had come to believe that they had probably preceded it. He was precise in so many areas of his life—wanting bills paid on time; always emerging from the bathroom in pyjamas and a dressing gown—the latter not what one would expect from a man who had spent much of his life sharing tents and showers with other men.

Sherlock liked the comfort of a dressing gown himself, but was perfectly willing to walk around the flat wrapped in a sheet with no pants under it, and when an idea had struck him forcibly which he absolutely had to pursue at once he had been known to erupt suddenly from his bedroom or bathroom in nothing at all. John had seen him in the buff any number of times; he had never seen John without a shirt and trousers. It didn't matter, of course, but it wasn't what one would expect from a man accustomed to living closely with other men.

Conclusion: modesty and orderliness were life-long habits, either instilled by John's mother or innate.

Secondary conclusion: John's phone was charged and working.

Tertiary conclusion: John was deliberately ignoring Sherlock's texts.

Quaternary conclusion: John was angry. Which Sherlock had not actually needed to deduce; it had been apparent from his friend's tone of voice just before he left the flat.

The question then was, why? John was tired, of course—he was always more prone to snap at Sherlock when he was tired. And he was irritated with Harry as well—more irritated than usual—so perhaps his anger was really a generalized annoyance with everyone, and could be entirely accounted for by the lack of sleep.

Or perhaps not. . . .

The taxi's arrival in Astor Mews put a temporary end to this frustratingly circular train of thought. The Mews was a courtyard of converted outbuildings—former stables and coach houses—tucked behind Astor Crescent, a quiet block of Georgian houses a short walk from the Chelsea Embankment. Number 5 seemed to be the largest of the group; it was considerably more generous in proportions than "mews house" often suggests. There was no police tape across the polished black front door, but a constable stood on duty beside it. He must have been told to expect the detective; he let him in without a fuss.

Once inside, Sherlock was unsurprised to find himself, not in a conventional hallway, but a wide entry area at one end of a large, contemporary space marked by a soaring ceiling, exposed beams and rafters, and long banks of windows that opened from one side of the room onto the cobbled courtyard he had just walked through, and onto a narrow, walled garden from the other. The furniture was a mix of classic mid-century modernist pieces, including a couple of Le Corbusier chairs very similar to Sherlock's own, and some striking contemporary works in polished, undulating wood and stone. The walls featured an even more striking collection of paintings by twentieth-century and contemporary artists. Sherlock, who knew rather more about art than he generally chose to admit, found the effect quite pleasing; while there were none of the hugely famous names that only museums or the obscenely wealthy can afford, the collection had clearly been put together by a knowledgeable buyer with money to spend and excellent taste.

At the far end of the room near the fireplace (a sleek, steel construct with no mantelpiece and a gas insert) Lestrade was sitting opposite a good-looking, dark-haired man in his mid-to-late thirties, whom Sherlock concluded from a glance must be the home's owner. He was tall, slim, and immaculately—Sherlock thought, excessively—well-dressed in a black Dolce & Gabbana suit and shirt, which he wore with a narrow silver tie and heavy cuff-links. He and Lestrade were leaning over a folder of some sort that lay open on the curving wooden coffee table in front of them. Sherlock slipped his hands into his pockets and stalked across the room to join them. Neither had apparently heard him enter; they both looked up at his approach.

"No body?" he enquired acidly, before Greg could make introductions. The absence of police tape or any of Lestrade's usual team made it obvious that there was no body anywhere in the house. The thing was a set-up, then, a nothing-case that Lestrade had called him in on simply to stem the tide of texts that had been flooding his phone for the past forty-eight hours.

The man in the dark suit raised his eyebrows, startled either by Sherlock's question, his tone, or both. Greg gave Sherlock a pained look.

"No, no body. This one's a theft. Where's John?"

Sherlock had already concluded that the case must be a theft: the papers spilling out of the folder onto the coffee table included photographic prints of a watercolour sketch and a painting in oils. Both showed the same subject—a Mid-Eastern courtyard peopled by men and women in Arabic dress, sitting and working under the canopy of a leafy tree. The colour was rich, the brushwork in the oil lushly detailed and realistic—about as far from the taste on display in the room around them as one could get.

Sherlock stared at these for a long moment, his hands digging down more deeply into his pockets, an odd expression flitting briefly over his face. Then his features tightened into their usual hauteur.

"Obvious," he snapped, ignoring Lestrade's question and enunciating the syllables with precision. "These are clearly photographs taken for insurance records. The paintings seem to be studies for John Frederick Lewis's 'The Hosh Courtyard of the Coptic Patriarch,' which is prominently featured in the big exhibit of Victorian paintings currently on view at the Tate Britain. However—"

"Who _are_ you?" the owner asked, sharply.

"Sorry," Greg apologized. "This is Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective I mentioned earlier. Sherlock, this is Gabriel Lance, one of the owners of the paintings. He returned from their house in the country this morning to find their home here had been broken into and the paintings were gone."

Lance nodded in acknowledgment without standing up or offering his hand. Sherlock kept his own hands firmly in his pockets and stared back at him unsmilingly before glancing again at the pictures, then at Lestrade.

"Just these?"

"Just these."

"Their value would be negligible compared to the other work in the house."

"On the contrary," Lance said, sounding aggrieved, "their value is _considerable_. Since the 1970's there has been an increase of interest in Lewis's work; today it is finally receiving the attention it deserves. He is now recognized as one of our finest Victorian painters—comparable to the Pre-Raphaelites in technique, and, in the eyes of the truly _discerning_ viewer"—his eyes darted to Sherlock's face with an expression that was positively hostile—"far more interesting. Where Rossetti and Morris gave us endless empty _pastiches_ of a medieval England that existed nowhere outside their besotted imaginations, Lewis created a meticulously accurate and sympathetic record of Islamic life in the Ottoman Empire."

He paused, cleared his throat, and added, in a less aggressive tone, "And of Coptic Christian life as well, as these studies and the Tate's painting demonstrate."

"Mr. Lance is an art expert," Lestrade explained, trying to sound conciliatory. "He runs a well-known art dealership here in Chelsea, and consults with the Tate."

"Britain or Modern?" Sherlock's tone was close to insolent.

 _Bugger it,_ Greg sighed to himself. _You shouldn't have pushed the point; you know he can't stand the idea that anyone's an expert but himself._ He was surprised, though, that Sherlock knew anything at all about the Tate, Britain or Modern, and that he'd been able to identify the artwork immediately. Posters for the exhibit featuring the Lewis painting had been displayed all over London for the past month, but it wasn't the sort of thing Greg would have expected Sherlock to notice, let alone store away in that Mind Palace of his—not when he couldn't be arsed to remember the most basic facts about the solar system. Although Greg had always suspected Sherlock of pulling their legs with that one.

"Both," Lance replied, fixing Sherlock with an appraising eye. "Inspector, is this man really necessary to your investigation?"

"Yeah," Greg said, hastily. "Yeah, he is. For God's sake, Sherlock, come upstairs and see if you can't work out how this thing was done. The Met's been providing security here for the past two months. An ant shouldn't have been able to get in, let alone a thief."

Sherlock raised his brows.

"You mean you've actually got a case for me, Lestrade?"

Greg sighed.

"You think I called you down here just to get you off my back? Come on. My Deputy Commissioner will have my head on a platter if I don't find out where we went wrong."

000000


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

The Major's kitchen was as elderly as John was expecting—at least as old as the man himself—and, like his clothes, neat, tidy, and spotless everywhere he had been able to see when cleaning. He filled an old-fashioned kettle at the tap and put it on the hob, fumbling a little as he struck a match to light the gas, the battered cooker being far too old to include an automatic lighter.

"My daughters keep giving me those electric kettles," he told John as he did this. "But I don't care for them; never have. I like a good, old-fashioned kettle like my mother used, with a whistle to it you can hear. Those new ones turn themselves off before I'm expecting them to be ready and then the water goes cold on me before I remember it."

"They make whistling ones," John pointed out. The old man winked at him.

"So they do," he said. "The girls have given me a couple of them, along with all the others. I just like my old one here best. They're afraid I'll burn the place down using the gas, but I won't – though if I _were_ going to, I'd be just as likely to do it any time I hotted up a bit of soup or boiled up a veg, now, wouldn't I?"

John smiled.

"I'm sure you're fine," he said. It was the truth: from what he'd seen so far, he didn't think the Major was showing any real signs of Alzheimer's at all. Probably he did misplace things occasionally, but he'd been able to maintain a military sense of order in both the museum and the kitchen and seemed quite conscious of everything he was doing there. Even his conversation had become more precise and to the point since they'd left Baker Street. John suspected that the rambling style which had made Sherlock so dismissive of the old man earlier had been the result of embarrassment more than anything else. Sherlock often did make people uncomfortable, and the Major had clearly not expected to have to explain himself to the famous detective rather than the fellow Army man he'd come to see.

"I believe I am, sir. If I ever do catch myself nodding off in the middle of cooking dinner, I'll call the girls and tell them to put me into one of those places where they make it for you. Till then, though, I'd just as soon stay here with my museum. I've got good neighbours here. Parts of Lewisham have gone sadly downhill, but this street's still a fine place to be. We've all been here together keeping an eye on each other for so long, we wouldn't know how to do without each other, don't you know?"

"That's more than one can say for most places these days."

"Indeed it is."

The kettle boiled, and the Major turned off the gas and made the tea. He set the table with plates and serviettes, and added a packet of biscuits that he took out of a cupboard which, John was glad to see, was rather better-stocked than his own back in Baker Street—not that that was saying a great deal. They sat together at the kitchen table while the old man told John everything he could remember about the medals and the man he suspected of taking them.

"They were two D.S.O.'s, one from each of the World Wars. They would have been quite valuable individually—before 1993 the Distinguished Service Order was the second-highest award given for gallantry in the face of the enemy, you know—but these had added interest because they were a pair: they were earned by a father and his son."

"Really? That's . . . unusual, is it?"

"There have been other father-and-son pairs, of course," the Major replied. "Probably many. But collectors are always interested in sets, or anything else that makes an award stand out as different from the rest."

"They were engraved? What were the names?"

To John's intense annoyance, his left hand, which had been giving him trouble all week, chose that moment to start shaking again. Hot tea splashed onto his leg and he had to set the mug down to keep from spilling any more. For a moment a wave of anger at his own weakness swept over him. It shouldn't matter—the Major must have known many men with bullet wounds and nerve damage—but somehow it still did.

The Major gave him a keen look. Then, unexpectedly, he looked down at his serviette and began to fumble with it, folding and refolding it in pleats between his rheumatic fingers.

"Collectors," he said, "like a good tale to go with their medals, too. The man who sold me the D.S.O.'s had plenty of those. They'd been earned by relatives of his, he claimed; cousins, a father and son, who were both dead now and had left their decorations to him. He had a lot of stories to tell about them, which convinced me of their provenance and added to my interest in the pieces. I paid him a good sum by the standards of the time—though that pales in comparison to their value now, of course."

"What sort of man was he?" John didn't attempt to pick his tea up again. He clenched his left hand and pressed it against his leg, which helped reduce the shaking.

"A dishonest one, I'm afraid. It troubles me to think it, but what else can I conclude? Even if he felt he was entitled to get them back, he should have offered to repay me what I'd given him for them all those years ago, not walked out with them in his pocket, as cool as you please."

"I meant, can you remember what he looked like, sir? Height? Hair colour? Any detail at all that could be helpful in finding him?"

"Oh, yes, of course. He was tall—over six feet—and in his early sixties, I should think. Hair silver-grey now—it was fair before—and he wears a moustache, also grey. Hair and moustache are short and well-trimmed. He was well-dressed, and very nicely spoken, too; gave the impression of coming from a good family, a good school. Very affable, as well, very pleasant in his manner, both now and before; I enjoyed talking to him. In fact, I'm surprised I didn't recognize him at once, but it had been a long time. Really, it goes to my heart to accuse the man of theft, but what else am I to think? I could _not_ have misplaced both the medals and the account book. Not at the same time. I'm quite certain of that."

The Major's distress at making the accusation was, if anything, more evident than his indignation at the cause of it; the sense of having misplaced his trust seemed to have disturbed the old man even more than the loss of the treasured medals themselves. Something like bile rose burning in John's throat: there was nothing worse in his books than betrayal. It went right to the heart of everything that mattered; no bodily wound could cut any deeper—and John knew something about those.

"I'm sure you're right, sir." It took a physical effort to choke back his anger. The Major was no child, of course, but there was something childlike about him, just the same: he was so completely honourable himself that it would never occur to him to suspect another man of dishonourable intentions until he was left with no choice. To take advantage of such a man seemed to John a particularly brutal thing to do.

"Tell me more about what happened, sir. Had you taken the medals out to show him?"

"Not at all. Nor the book. He simply asked if he could look around. He was interested in the retired colours; wanted to know if they were originals and when I said no, asked how I'd gone about making them—where I'd got the patterns from, that kind of thing. We were still talking about them when that dratted kettle started to sing. Really, perhaps my daughters are right after all; if I'd been using one of those plastic things they give me, it would have turned itself off without a sound and I'd never have come back here and left him alone. I offered him tea, too. He said he'd be glad to take a cup. I called him when it was ready and we sat back here and chatted over it a little while, just as you and I are doing now."

"What did he do after that?"

"Thanked me for my hospitality and left. A cool customer, sir; a very cool customer indeed."

"How long was he alone in the front room, would you say, sir?"

"Perhaps five minutes at most."

"And the medals were where?"

"In the glass-topped case. On the upper shelf, where they could be easily seen. I was . . . rather fond of them. Really, I _am_ an old fool to have left that man alone, and then not to have checked that the best things were here before he left."

"That would have been very awkward to manage without giving offense, sir."

"It simply never crossed my mind. I've never had any trouble with a visitor before. I don't get very many, you know, and the ones who do come in are usually military men like you or me, sir; brothers-in arms, the kind of men you'd trust with your life."

"Don't blame yourself, sir. There's really no way you could have known. And perhaps we can trace the medals still. He'll have to dispose of them somewhere. Unless, of course, he just wanted them for himself."

"I thought of that. And if they had really been his, nothing would have pleased me more than to return them to him. I've told you how I feel about medals being separated from their rightful owners."

"You don't think they belonged to him, then?" John's hand seemed to be under control again, so he picked up his tea and took another drink. It was getting cool, but the caffeine would help with his headache. It had pounding all day, and while the fresh air on their walk from the bus had helped a little, that effect had definitely worn off by now.

"I do not. One thing I have learned from a long life, Captain Watson, is how very little people change. A man's character when he is young is most likely to be his character when he is old. There are exceptions, of course – the world has always had its Sauls and Pauls – but they are rare. So I'm afraid his recent dishonesty would make me doubt his earlier story, even if I had not already begun to do so. But in fact, I had. As I said earlier, he claimed at the time he sold them to me that they'd come down to a second cousin who didn't care about them and had passed them on to him, thinking he'd know what to do with them. He'd been in the Army himself, you see—the Parachute Regiment, in fact."

"The _Parachute Regiment?_ " John wasn't able to keep his voice from rising sharply in surprise, and he had to put his tea down on the table to keep from spilling it again. The Parachute Regiment? Surely not.

"Yes. Shocking, isn't it? That's really why I trusted him so readily. He wasn't one of these leech-like collectors who've never served a day but want to puff themselves up by showing off the honours earned by other, braver men. He was a _Para._ "

"Of course," John said. "I understand."

The Parachute Regiment was a storied one, known, among other things, for providing support to the Special Forces. Its men were supposed to be the best of the best. But even the Paras had their bad apples, John thought, undoubtedly more than one-there was nothing in that that should have taken him aback. And they were based in Colchester, only an hour or so away; it would be easy enough for a Para to get to the Major's museum if he'd heard about it and realized what an easy place it would be to raise a little money, either by selling off some medals he'd come by-honestly or dishonestly-or by walking off with a few in his pockets, to sell on eBay. . . .

"He seemed to know all about the medals, as I told you. And the day he brought them in wasn't the first time we'd met. He'd been in the week before with his wife, just to look around, they said, and I'd enjoyed their visit so much that when he came back with the medals I was predisposed to believe him, I suppose. She was a lovely young woman—sweet and open and innocent. You could see it in her eyes, that she was completely incapable of guile. I found her absolutely charming. . . ."

The Major's voice trailed away, his face visibly moved. John didn't know what to say.

"I'm terribly afraid, you know," the old man went on, his voice husky with emotion, "that they were really hers."

" _Hers?_ " John's skin prickled.

"Not her own, of course, not in those days. I meant her family's—her father's or her grandfather's. The dates were right for that. I didn't think of it at the time, most unfortunately, but later I came to suspect that he might have taken them without her knowledge. That he had, in fact, stolen them from her."

A sudden surge of anger made John clench his hands tightly against his legs. Another betrayal—and a woman by her husband, there was nothing worse than that—unless one included the things some men did to children, of course. . . .

 _Stop,_ he had to tell himself firmly. _Get a grip. None of this should matter to you. Where's your professional detachment?_ But the thought of the innocent young woman the Major had found so charming opening her drawer and finding her treasures taken by the man she'd trusted with her life made him want to hit something.

"Why did you think they were hers?" he asked.

"It was the names on the medals. I researched them some time later, and his whole family—I used to know people in the Genealogical Society who helped me with things like that—but even though they were an old one in their county I could find no trace of the cousins he'd talked about, no connection between those medals and anyone at all in his family that I could learn of."

John took a deep breath, clenching and then unclenching his left hand.

"What _were_ the names on the medals, sir?" he asked again. "That's critical for identifying them, you know."

The old man looked down at the table and sighed.

"Well," he said. "Er—yes, well. That was some time ago. I'm afraid—er, well, I'm afraid that, as I told you, I have always had a terribly poor memory for names." He didn't look up at John, but picked up his serviette and began running it through his fingers again. "It's a bad fault, I know. My dear wife was always chaffing me about it. Of course, I realized when I came to Baker Street that you'd need to know the names and I ought to be able to tell you them, but. . . ."

There was a pause as what he was trying to say sank in.

"That's all right, sir," John said then, gently. "I'll talk to a man I know at the Yard and see if there isn't some way to trace them anyway. They're bound to show up somewhere, you know, when he sells them—in a pawnshop, or on eBay, or wherever people trade in these things."

The Major nodded but didn't raise his eyes. He looked ashamed.

"You're too kind," he said, his gnarled old fingers still fiddling with his serviette. "Really much too kind, Captain Watson, to be taking all this trouble for a foolish old man like me."

000000

Sherlock tapped his fingers impatiently against the bedroom window. One way the thief might have got into the Astor Mews house had been obvious even to Lestrade: the window had been left slightly ajar. There was, however, no apparent way in which anyone could have reached it: no footprints or marks from a ladder in the sodden soil of the garden bed below, no signs that anyone had come over the roof from the neighbouring buildings.

The rain might have washed roof-top evidence away, of course, but Lestrade had other reasons for ruling out such an approach and Sherlock, to his own annoyance, could see no reason to disagree with them. The Specialist Operations Protection Command unit (the branch of the Met responsible for the protection of Cabinet Ministers) had been working hand-in-hand with the Counter-Terrorism Protective Security Command to keep the entire house under meticulous surveillance for the past three months—ever since Lance's partner ("husband," Greg had corrected himself, as he filled Sherlock in) had been made Secretary for Culture, Media, and Sport, a position that was considered more than usually sensitive at the moment, with the London Olympics just a few months away. Unless someone on the protection team was not only lying about being on his post the night before but had also found a way to manipulate the surveillance-camera footage to cover up the break-in—which, given the layers of security around _that_ appeared even to Sherlock to be out of the question—the burglar could not have approached the house from the roof, as he would have been seen.

The possibility of a security lapse involving their most trusted agents was one the Met's Commissioner took very seriously indeed, which was why he had called on the Homicide and Serious Crimes Command to handle what would otherwise have been treated as a routine robbery investigation. Lestrade's team had, of course, already studied the area closely but had been able to find no indications of how thief might have entered. Entered he had, however, as the pictures were clearly missing—the empty hooks on the wall and the faint marks left by frames rubbing against the paint were unmistakable.

"You said, 'Why those?'" Greg recalled from their brief conversation as they'd climbed the stairs. Lance had retired to his study, a small room off the entranceway on the ground floor where he was making phone calls. "Of course, they're a lot smaller and easier to grab than any of the other valuable stuff in the house, but we're thinking the theft might have been commissioned, too. There's a pretty brisk trade in that sort of thing, you know: collectors who want something specific and don't mind how they get it."

"Idiots," Sherlock intoned with precision. Greg wasn't sure whether he meant the crooked collectors or his team. The probabilities were in favour of the latter but there was nothing to be gained by bristling, so he ignored the comment.

" _Could_ he have come over the roof, d'you think?" he asked, in spite of having already told Sherlock all the reasons he didn't think so. "The rain's done for any marks we could see, but I thought you might find something."

Sherlock, however, showed little interest in pulling himself out of the window to inspect the roof, studying the skylights, or even scanning the carpet for any stray threads or footmarks that might have escaped police attention. Ignoring Greg, he strolled down the hallway, hands behind his back, apparently looking at the remaining artwork. The paintings on this floor were a mix of styles and periods, but they all seemed more old-fashioned and, to Greg's mind, more straightforward, easier to understand, than the works on display in the sitting or dining rooms below.

Unlike the paintings, Sherlock's expression as he studied them struck him as more remote and inaccessible than usual.

Sherlock stopped before a blank stretch of wall between the main bedroom (large and masculine, everything including the bed-linens in shades of grey or black) and the bathroom (also done up in grey and black, and featuring a very modern glass-walled shower enclosure, a formidable array of gleaming taps, pipes, and nozzles, and an enormous freestanding bathtub in a distinctly contemporary style).

"Something's missing," he said, suddenly.

"Another painting, you mean?"

" _Ob_ viously. There are no photographs here or anywhere else in the house, and this is hardly the spot where anyone would hang a mirror. They've got more than enough of those in that bathroom as it is."

Greg leaned in to look. The hook had been removed, but yes, there was a small hole at the height where one would expect a picture to be hung. Peering more closely, he could just make out the faintest of marks left by the edge of the frame, which must have been about two feet long and eighteen inches wide. He shrugged.

"Guess they took something down. Lance would've noticed if it had been stolen, for sure. I can ask him, though."

"Do."

Greg gave the detective a puzzled look, but returned downstairs to ask.

"Oh, that," Lance said. "It's nothing; just a small portrait—something my husband painted, no value. It's at our country house now. We took it down there last week."

"What did I say?" Greg asked after relaying this to Sherlock, who had followed him down the stairs but remained outside the study in the entranceway.

The detective made no response. He was examining the wall between the study door and the hall table, which, like the tables in the sitting room, seemed to be made of half a tree trunk, split open and polished so the grain shone. A huge and, to Greg's mind, particularly impenetrable painting hung over it. Greg wondered how anyone managed to live with a thing like that. Great for impressing one's guests, no doubt—and, of course, an M.P. and a successful art dealer undoubtedly needed to do a lot of entertaining and impressing—but not very homely.

Like most people, Greg preferred his surroundings on a smaller scale and needed a little clutter around him to be really comfortable. He couldn't imagine anyone's frying up breakfast in a place like this, or sitting around at the end of the day with their feet up, eating take-away pizza and watching the telly.

"What's there?" he asked, as Sherlock was still studying the empty part of the wall.

"These scratches,"—Sherlock pointed to two all-but-invisible marks on the paint—"match the ones on the wall outside the bath upstairs, but the colour around them"—Greg peered in, and thought he could just, _just_ , make out a faint reddish-brown tinge along the tiny scratches—"is brighter. The backing was stapled, rather carelessly and some time ago, to the frame; two of the staples were left protruding from the back and have rusted over time. They made these scratches on the wall. The marks are quite distinctive; the chance that another picture would have identical dimensions"—sweeping his hand in front of the wall to remind Greg of the other, longer marks that indicated the outline of the frame—" _and_ staples capable of leaving scratches like these in exactly the same places is miniscule, but I checked behind the other pictures in the hall upstairs before coming down so I know that none of them could have done this, while the paintings on this floor are clearly much too large to have left any of these marks."

"And—this matters, why?" Greg felt, as he so frequently did, that either he or Sherlock must have gone completely off the rails, but he knew the detective was perfectly sane—or at least, as sane as he'd ever been.

"That isn't obvious?"

Greg scowled. Sherlock took a deep breath, as if steeling himself to something like patience.

"The picture that used to hang upstairs has also hung here," he explained, over-enunciating every word.

"I got that."

"More recently."

"Because the marks are brighter. Yeah, I got that, too."

Sherlock glared at him in exasperation.

"You really don't see it?"

"You know I don't," Greg growled. "I haven't the foggiest what this has to do with two entirely different paintings being stolen from the hall upstairs while the best and brightest from the Met's security branch were watching the house. With the Olympics coming up, we've had this place and their country one on top priority for the past two months, ever since the last Secretary got caught out in that financial scandal and this one got his job."

"Ah, yes." The odd expression Greg had noticed when Sherlock was looking at the photos of the missing art flickered briefly across his face again, then vanished. "This man's—husband, you said?"

Greg nodded. Sherlock looked down at his long, beautiful hands and rubbed at the edge of one of his nails as if it were bothering him.

Greg watched him curiously: this wasn't something he'd seen Sherlock do before, and it puzzled him. Almost a minute passed before the detective looked up again. When he did, he drew in a sharp breath and said something that, for all its obvious sarcasm, left Greg beyond puzzled:

"Well, I suppose I _could_ be wrong. I need to give this more thought."

Then he turned abruptly and strode out of the house, his long coat billowing around him and Greg Lestrade staring after him, mouth open in astonishment, wondering if he could possibly have heard that properly.


	4. Chapter 4

The Empty Home: Chapter 4

It took Sherlock five minutes to flag down a taxi. He hadn't thought to bring an umbrella when he'd rushed out of the flat that morning; by the time he jerked the car's door open and slipped inside the rain had flattened his hair to his head and run down his coat collar on the wrong side, leaving him wet and cold. He rubbed at the back of his neck irritably to try to dry it and pulled out his phone, but there had been no reply from John. Sherlock snapped off another text to his flatmate, inquiring curtly why he hadn't answered yet, and a second reminding him to get milk. Then he leaned his head back against the tattered seat and brooded.

He was not happy. In spite of the acid sarcasm with which he had laced that parting remark to Lestrade, he felt he had given the D.I. a glimpse of the emotions that had been swirling uncontrollably inside him ever since he had walked across the sitting room of the Astor Mews house and identified the artwork in the photographs on the table. He felt exposed, a rare sensation that made him profoundly uncomfortable. On top of that, he was frustrated with himself for having let emotion cloud his reason, for not having been able to control it. And then, working on him under all that still were those swirling emotions themselves. . . .

He wasn't wrong about what had happened to the pictures, of course. He'd never thought that for a minute. Saying he might be had simply been a way of covering his indecision about what to do next: how much to tell Lestrade, how much to give away. It had let him escape the D.I. without having to decide.

The fact that he'd needed to escape irritated him intensely. And the fact that he was thinking in terms of _giving something away_ only compounded his irritation; that was emotion again, irrational, illogical, leading only to clouded thinking and confusion.

Not that he was in the least confused about what would happen if he told Lestrade what had happened to the paintings. The consequences were quite clear. His uncertainty was in regard to his willingness to be responsible for those consequences. The recognition of that appalled him: it was idiotic sentiment, it was _caring,_ it had no place inside the buttresses of logic he had built around himself for years. And yet he hadn't been able to make himself open his mouth and tell Lestrade what Lestrade wanted to know.

He tapped his fingers rapidly against the window. In spite of all the regulations against smoking, the taxi stank of tobacco; Sherlock found himself longing intensely for a cigarette. There was a shop at the corner of Baker Street; he had some money in his pocket; was it enough?

It was. He leaned forward.

"Just stop at the corner," he told the driver. "I'll walk the rest of the way."

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Sherlock spent the rest of the afternoon trying to _think_. The emptiness of the flat should have been helpful, but wasn't. John had not yet returned or replied to any of his texts. Though Sherlock did not like having to admit it, he knew that his flat-mate's lack of communication was making him jittery.

The detective had become increasingly aware over the past few months that he did not think as clearly or feel as comfortable without John's company as he did in it. This was not something he fully understood, so it disturbed him, but it was a _fact_ and that meant that he could not ignore it.

John's absence would have been troubling to him under any circumstances, but the thing that he had to think about now was by no means unrelated to that absence, or at least to the way it made him feel, and so he found the emptiness of the flat around him almost intolerable.

If he sat in his chair with his eyes closed and his hands steepled, he found himself unable to shut out the image of the vacant chair in front of him; if he stretched out on the sofa, his usual meditative techniques eluded him. In either case his left leg began to jitter uncontrollably, as it sometimes did when he was unusually keyed-up. Picking up his violin and trying to play was no more effective: the melodic pieces reminded him that he really preferred performing them for an appreciative audience (John), while the experiments in dissonance that John called "scraping and scratching" seemed to do nothing to release his pent-up emotions when there was no flat mate to be irritated by them.

No flat mate, no friend.

" _I don't have friends_ ," he'd said. And then later, more honestly, " _I just have one_." How much longer, though, would that be true? John's frustration had been palpable since their return from Dartmoor. He was tired, of course, but he was angry, too—and Sherlock knew that almost anyone would say he had good reason to be. He didn't exactly think that John had a good reason—he had meant no harm when he'd tried to give John that drug, and that ought to be enough, oughtn't it?—but he knew that his perceptions of these things were often not the same as other people's. Hence just one friend. But for how much longer?

John could easily decide that their friendship was no longer worth the bother. It had, after all, happened before—and that had been more painful than Sherlock cared to remember, particularly as he knew that that loss had been at least partly, perhaps largely, his fault. It was illogical, of course, to blame himself for being who he was. Refusing to join in other people's criticism of himself or to try to change in any way was a cloak he had wrapped himself in protectively most of his life. But after this past year with John he knew now—had known for quite some time—that _being_ who he was did not actually have to mean always _doing_ things the way he tended to do them, and he knew that his habitual way of handling other people was sometimes— _often_ —as John would say, a "bit not good." By which, of course, he knew that John meant "more than a bit."

Someone else had meant "more than a bit," too. That was a long time ago. The personalities, the sources of pressure, the circumstances were all quite different this time. And he'd been trying to change. But as he set his violin down, he felt with a chill in the pit of his stomach that it could happen again, any day, any minute. His memory summoned up the anger in John's voice before he'd left the flat that morning, and the empty room and his phone's empty screen taunted him with the thought that he hadn't been able to change enough and it was happening again right now.

And then, of course, there was Moriarty. He was still out there, somewhere, and so he remained a continual presence at the back of Sherlock's mind, hovering alongside that undeletable memory of John standing by the pool in a Semtex vest. Sherlock did not think that Moriarty would have made another move yet. Mycroft was following that situation closely and seemed confident that there was no cause for immediate alarm. But the thought of another kidnapping, however unlikely, made Sherlock's skin crawl.

He fingered his phone, wondering if he should call Mycroft and tell him—what? That John hadn't answered his texts for six hours? He knew exactly how his brother's face would purse up with malicious amusement; knew precisely in what tones he would say, "What, can't have him out of your sight for an afternoon, little brother? Tsk, tsk. My, my. What did I tell you about sentiment, Sherlock?"

The thought of it set his teeth on edge. He did not like to make himself ridiculous: he wasn't John's mother, for God's sake; the man was perfectly capable of looking after himself. Though if he and Mycroft were wrong, and Moriarty _had_. . . .

This was intolerable. He would go mad if he sat around letting his mind spin like this any longer. And in any case, he knew what to do, at least about those paintings: his mind had processed that as soon as he had stopped giving it his conscious attention.

He grabbed his coat and ran down the stairs. Twenty minutes later he was in Astor Mews again. Presumably the Met's security team still had the house under observation but there was no longer any visible police presence. Sherlock rang the bell and waited. Gabriel Lance opened the door.

"You again?" he said, unsmilingly. "What do you want?"

"A talk," Sherlock said, putting his foot in the doorway and his shoulder to the door to keep Lance from shutting it in his face.

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He let himself smoke another cigarette on the way home. The nicotine calmed his nerves and sharpened his mind, but didn't give him any answers to the still-pressing question of how much he wanted to tell Lestrade. Mrs. Hudson, he noticed from various small signs on opening the door, was not at home. Not shopping—her ordinary coat was hanging in the hallway, her string bags poking out of a pocket. Where then? Better coat missing from its peg, slight marks from second-best shoes on the carpet—ah, dinner out somewhere, with a woman, not a man—that friend across town who talked too much, most likely, which meant a cinema afterwards, probably that new film about the Best Exotic Something-or-other that she'd been nattering tediously on about the other day. . . .

He had stubbed the cigarette out on the pavement before he opened the door, but the taste of it was still strong in his mouth and nostrils and almost made him miss the other scents hovering very faintly in the hallway: geranium, rose, patchouli, musk, and leather. It was a mixture he recognized at once: Geo. F. Trumper's "Spanish Leather."

Mycroft? Possibly, though he generally preferred Trumper's "Euchris." The only other person Sherlock could think of who might have entered the house in his absence and who could easily afford Trumper's products was Jim Moriarty. He had no idea whether Moriarty used Spanish Leather or not: he hadn't been wearing it when he posed as Gay Jim from IT, and Sherlock had never come close enough to him during their encounter by the pool to tell what he smelled of. Any odour would have been overwhelmed by the chlorine in any case.

All his senses on high alert now, Sherlock followed the all-but-indetectable trail of cologne up the seventeen steps to 221B. The faintest traces of mud on the stairs—so faint he might actually have missed them if he hadn't been looking for them—suggested a taller man than Moriarty with bigger feet, but they were sufficiently indistinct that he could not be sure whether the intruder was Mycroft or not. Even fainter traces suggested that, whoever the man was, he had come down the stairs as well as up them.

All the same, Sherlock, who never trusted anything when Mycroft was involved, stepped into the flat prepared to find his brother draped over a chair. But his deductions had been correct: the flat was empty. Only the faintest hint of Spanish Leather still hung in the air.

Sherlock walked carefully through the rooms, sniffing like a hound. The visitor had been in the kitchen and the back corridor, as far as Sherlock's own room. There the scent stopped. His door had certainly been opened, but there was no sign that anyone had gone past it into the room.

That was odd. Very odd.

Not willing to take anything for granted, Sherlock worked his way around his bedroom as well as the rest of the first-floor flat, scanning every inch of wall, ceiling, light fixture, bathroom fitting, cupboard, appliance, piece of furniture, carpet, floor, door and doorknob in the flat thoroughly. When he had finished with the more obvious places, he took out a tiny screwdriver and unfastened every electrical plate and ceiling fixture in order to poke and peer behind it, but he could find no indication that anything had been tampered with, no sign that any bug, bomb, or booby trap had been introduced into his home.

Frowning, he returned to the landing. The barest trace of cologne was just detectable at the foot of the stairs; he followed it. The second floor contained, in addition to John's bedroom, a box room and a bathroom with a toilet, basin, and old-fashioned tub without a shower. The scent bypassed the box room and bathroom, continued into the bedroom, and stopped there.

Feeling a prickle of unease—why had this visitor entered John's room but not his own?—Sherlock checked everything as thoroughly as he had in the flat below.

He hadn't been inside John's room for some time—since the first week after John had moved in, in fact. It was as orderly and scrupulously clean as he was expecting, but he was surprised by how sparsely inhabited it seemed. John did not own many things, of course, but Sherlock had still been expecting to see more of them on display in this, John's most private place. There were no pictures or other ornaments on the walls. A book was lying on the night table, along with the chargers for John's computer and phone, a water glass, and some pain medications and sleeping pills. Sherlock frowned over these; in spite of the concern he had been feeling over his friend's condition since Baskerville he hadn't realized that things had come to the point where John, who tended to be stoic about pain, had allowed himself to stock up on either one. If he was actually taking them, they couldn't be working very well—which was as troubling as the thought that John needed them at all.

The only other personal item in the room was a framed photo of two men standing together—one white-haired and older, the other in his late twenties or early thirities, wearing an army uniform with a captain's bars on his shoulders and holding a very small boy whom Sherlock could just identify as John. The uniformed man looked so much like the grown-up John that anyone would have recognized him as John's father. The older man, Sherlock concluded, was undoubtedly his grandfather.

Sherlock pocketed the pills, planning to analyse them to make sure they hadn't been tampered with. He was not going to take a chance on Moriarty or anyone else having swapped John's pills out for poison. Then he proceeded around the wardrobe, whose contents were entirely predictable, and the chest of drawers, which held almost no surprises either. The only interesting thing in it was a flat canvas-covered box at the back of the bottom drawer.

Sherlock felt no scruples whatever about opening this. Five minutes later he was still staring into it with narrowed eyes, baffled.

The box contained John's dress studs, his rank insignia, a handful of photographs showing groups of laughing men and women in combat uniform, one obviously older photo of a beautiful woman with a girl beside her and a small boy (clearly John again) on her lap—and nothing else.

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	5. Chapter 5

Author's note: Be warned: there are a few uses of the f-word here. I hope no one will be offended by them. I couldn't imagine Harry not using it freely.

Chapter 5:

John left Major Amberley with repeated assurances that as soon as he possibly could he would look up his friend at Scotland Yard and talk to him about the Case of the Missing Medals. If Greg wasn't tied up with work, he thought, he'd drag him out for a pint and a chat that evening, which would be a refreshing change from frowsting in the flat with a grumpy Sherlock. His next stop, however—it was now mid-afternoon—had to be Harry's, which wasn't nearly as appealing a prospect.

"Took you long enough," she grumped when she came down to open the door. She followed this up with a clumsy hug, which he returned just as awkwardly.

"Sorry," he said, following her up the stairs to her first-floor flat. "Things have been a bit busy." The lie grated on his conscience, but it was better than the truth, surely: that he'd been doing absolutely nothing for the past two weeks, but even sitting around 221B with an out-of-sorts self-identified sociopath had seemed more appealing than hauling himself halfway across town to visit his only sister.

"Yeah, yeah," she said, sizing him up with a practiced eye as she opened her door. "I know. Chasing around after that mad detective bloke is always more fun than coming to see me."

John bit back the temptation to say, "Why do you think that is, then?" and gave her a tired smile.

"You look exhausted," she said at once. "You'd be better off chasing after him less and visiting me more. Want something to drink? Coffee, I mean? Or tea. I really am going to do it this time."

"Good for you," he said. "No, nothing for me, thanks. I've been drinking tea all day."

"I'll have some anyway." She went into the little kitchen to put the kettle on. "Can you take a look at my computer, then?"

"What's the matter with it?"

"All my files have disappeared."

" _Disappeared?_ "

"You heard me."

"You've got a back-up, though?"

"Would I have asked you about it if I had?"

John sighed.

"Let me take a look; I'll see what I can do."

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Sherlock was determined to search the entire house as thoroughly as he had the top two floors. He did not want to take any chances on Moriarty or anyone else having chosen 221A or the still-vacant 221C to plant a bomb in—or a listening device, or any other kind of spyware or booby-trap—so his next stop after scouring the rest of the top floor was Mrs. Hudson's flat.

The smell of cologne was strong in her kitchen—"Spanish Leather," as he had begun thinking of the uninvited visitor, had obviously lingered there. That was almost as troubling as the fact that he had visited John's room. Or was it? Could Spanish Leather have been visiting at Mrs. Hudson's invitation?

Perhaps he was one of those people who like touring old houses—a taste Sherlock found inexplicable, but knew was not uncommon among people who hadn't grown up in them. It was hard to imagine an Englishman asking to look around, but Mrs. Hudson had lived in America and had friends there still. He couldn't remember her mentioning that any of them were coming to visit, but then, he made a point of ignoring or deleting almost everything she said anyway, fond though he was of her. And the visit might have been unexpected. The weather had been terrible for weeks; her hip was probably acting up. If Spanish Leather was an old friend from her days in America who was interested in Victorian architecture, he might have asked to see the rest of the house and she might have trusted him enough to send him upstairs to look around by himself.

Would an American wear Trumper cologne? Possibly, particularly (Sherlock grinned, thinking of Mycroft) if his tastes tended towards the Victorian. But—and this thought wiped the grin off his face at once—why would anyone who could afford Trumper's products have any desire to look at this particular rather small and shabby Victorian house, when, if houses were his thing, he would have had every opportunity to see many much more interesting ones? The only possible reason any well-heeled visitor could have for wanting to walk through 221B was the fact that Sherlock himself lived there.

Spanish Leather might be a fan, then. Yet every instinct Sherlock had told him that the intruder was an enemy. Of course, the two could go hand in hand: even Sherlock, who paid as little attention to popular culture as possible, was aware that fans of famous people sometimes let their devotion to a beloved actor or musician get out of hand and did things that the object of their attention found intrusive or threatening. Then the police had to be called in, and sometimes even Sherlock. It would be ironic indeed if, thanks to John's ridiculous blog, he had now picked up this kind of fan himself.

Of course, the most likely candidate for that role was the stalker Sherlock already had—Jim Moriarty. But the traces left by Spanish Leather's muddy shoes definitely indicated a much taller man, and Jim Moriarty wouldn't send a deputy to poke around 221B for him; he would come himself.

Sherlock had been scouring 221A and the empty basement flat while thinking the problem through. He had found nothing except a pair of electronic listening devices hidden in the light fixture in Mrs. Hudson's kitchen. These set off no alarm bells for him, as they were identical to the ones Mycroft regularly had his minions install in 221B, and Sherlock just as regularly removed from the flat. He'd been expecting to find them. He knew that Mycroft had been monitoring Mrs. H.'s flat since the CIA agents had assaulted her there, and in fact he recognized these as ones that had been in place for some time. The last time he'd come across them he'd amused himself by scratching on them the microscopic letters, "MYOB!" which stood for both "Mind Your Own Business!" and "Mycroft, You Overweight Bastard!"—a message he was certain his brother had received and decoded in both its meanings.

Just in case he hadn't, Sherlock spoke the words out loud now in front of the devices, enunciating the letters and their translations with emphasis. But he left the bugs in place, as he had earlier, out of the perverse conviction that Mrs. Hudson was actually safer living with Mycroft's oversight than without it.

He didn't bother to examine his motives for refusing that surveillance himself; he was already thoroughly acquainted with them. The fact that he had been leaving John exposed as well struck him for the first time. He turned away from that thought quickly.

It occurred to him as he went back upstairs that Mycroft had apparently never bugged John's bedroom. He wondered briefly what that meant: whether Mycroft respected John's privacy enough to have left that space alone, whether he trusted John to be able to look after himself (a thought that stirred up feelings of indignation against his older brother for not extending the same trust to _him_ )—or whether he simply hadn't thought John worth bothering about. Sherlock suspected the latter. It had never even occurred to him before that Mycroft _might_ have bugged John's room; for all the times he had taken his brother's miniature cameras and microphones off the ceilings of 221B's sitting room and kitchen and, to his intense annoyance, his own bedroom, he had never thought to walk upstairs and see if there were any that needed removing from John's room. Which was another fact about himself that he really didn't want to examine too closely. . . .

Sherlock spent the next two hours happily analysing John's pills. At first the tension he was still feeling about the intrusion into the flat and John's continued absence from it kept him from fully enjoying the process. But after a while his mind gave itself over to the pleasures of chemistry and he began to hum contentedly to himself as he worked—though if anyone else had been present they would not have known that that was what he was doing. Boarding school had taught him to keep his tells to himself; his humming was silent.

By the time he had finished he knew that the intruder had not introduced any kind of poison into either of John's bottles. The pills themselves were of course no longer usable, but that was easily remedied: he sent John a text telling him to visit the all-night Boots on his way home and replace them. Congratulating himself on having thought of this, he stretched himself out on the sofa and steepled his hands under his chin, prepared to meditate more fully on the question of who this non-poisoning, non-booby-trap-leaving, Geo. F. Trumper-wearing visitor could have been.

He was just settling in when he became aware of something hard and cold pressing against his left elbow. He sat up with a start. There should not have been anything hard or cold among the sofa cushions, which he had searched thoroughly just a few hours earlier.

It was a mobile phone. With a spasm of intense annoyance, Sherlock realized he had made two basic errors that day:

-When he'd searched the sofa, he'd assumed that whatever the visitor might have planted there would be carefully fixed in place. He had failed to allow for the possibility that there might be something loose between the cushions that would shift around as he pulled them out. It was a childish mistake that Mycroft would never let him hear the end of if he found out about it.

-He had entirely forgotten that John had turned his message alert off that morning (at Sherlock's own impatient request) and then thrown the phone across the room when Harry's last text annoyed him. It had landed on the sofa, he remembered now. The Major must have sat there while John made him tea and the phone slid down between the cushions, where it stayed silently until now, undoubtedly slipping deeper into the sofa as Sherlock had pulled the cushions out and replaced them one at a time when he was searching the flat.

Sherlock did not really expect to be infallible, but making mistakes that basic disturbed him. They were proof positive, if he had needed any more proof, that the emotions that had been flooding him in wave after wave all day were destructive to his logical faculties and should be guarded against with even greater attention and effort.

But if he was angry with himself for his own idiotic lapses of perception and recall, and for the more profound failure to defend himself against the undermining sallies of emotion, he was also aware of a deep sense of relief. John had not responded to his texts because John didn't have his phone with him. His day-long silence was not, as Sherlock had feared, an indication that his annoyance with his flatmate had escalated to previously unknown levels, or that Moriarty had somehow slipped through Mycroft's surveillance network and attacked John again; it only meant that John was an idiot and had gone out for the day without finding his mobile and taking it with him.

There had been nothing to worry about at all. Everything was quite all right.

Smiling, Sherlock settled back on the sofa with John's phone. There was still the mystery of the cologne-wearing intruder to work out, as well as the puzzle of the contents of that canvas box in John's drawer and—still—the problem of what to tell Lestrade about the two missing "Coptic Patriarchs," but for the moment he was willing to put those problems on the back burner and take advantage of this unexpected opportunity to amuse himself by breaking John's latest password and reading his mail.

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John was entirely unsurprised to find that Harry had been exaggerating. Her computer was functioning perfectly well, and–as far as he could see—there was nothing wrong with any of her files, either.

"Everything seems to be fine," he told her, after looking it over.

"It's _not_ ," she snapped in response. "All the files that _matter_ are gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes, gone! Missing. Deleted. Don't you get it, thickhead? I can't find them _anywhere._ "

John's lips tightened. It was a good thing, he thought, that he had trained as both a soldier _and_ a doctor; they were both careers that demanded constant self-control in the face of illogical, annoying, insulting and infuriating behaviour from other people (superior officers, patients, other doctors); he had had the benefit of a double dose of practice in keeping his cool. So he was able to resist the temptation to tell her whose head was thickest and what she could do with it, and instead of standing up and walking out the door, he huffed out a sigh and asked, "Did you check your bin?"

"Yes, of course I did. I'm not a fucking idiot!"

John's head started to pound again, a distinct, rhythmic beat.

"I didn't say you were," he said, evenly. "Or a thickhead, either."

Only the tightening of his mouth and nostrils and the clenching of his left hand gave any hint of the raging temper he was starting to feel, but Harry knew him as well as he knew her, and he wasn't surprised when she dropped her eyes and her cheeks flushed at the rebuke, or by the sudden softening of her tone when she answered. He knew that that was as close to an apology as he was likely to get from her in person, though she scattered "Sorry" around liberally when she was texting him or posting offensive comments to his blog.

"It was the first thing I did," she said, more calmly, and then stunned him by adding, "I'm sorry, John. I didn't mean . . . I'm just so upset. This means so much to me. I've been keeping a sort of diary, thinking about myself and my life, who I really am and why and how I got to be where I am now, and then I've been taking pieces of that—the bits I don't mind putting out there in public—and posting them on the blog. That's all that's on here, really; the rest is just email and stuff for work. I . . . haven't really written anything else for a while now. Well, more than a while. Not since . . ." Her voice started to shake. "You know. I didn't think I could still do it, but Ella thought I should try again, and she's been so encouraging. I felt like I was really starting to get the feel of it again and some of the writing was good. . . ."

She turned her head away, but John could see the tears trembling on her eyelashes and was overtaken by a sudden surge of compassion for his sister and condemnation of himself. There had been a time when she had never gone anywhere without a notebook to scribble in and a pen, usually one with green or purple ink. As a teenager she was always writing—diary entries, stories, poems, plays. It had been her passion and her means of escape, just as his had been running and rugby, but then she'd discovered the faster and easier release of alcohol, and after a while the notebooks and green and purple pens had disappeared. It must hurt intensely to have lost that part of herself to the drinking for so long. It hurt to hear her talk of it now.

 _God, you're a brute, John,_ he thought, angrily. _It's **good**_ _for her to be getting back to this. Did you have to be so cross with her about it? Couldn't you just have read her damned blog when she asked you to, and told her you liked it_?

The pounding in his head was spreading everywhere. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to work the pain out.

"The other stuff—the email and documents for work—that's all there? It's just your personal writing that's gone?"

"Yes."

"That's odd."

"That's what I thought. And oh, John, my blog—something's gone wrong with that, too. My password doesn't seem to work anymore, and I can't get into it at all."

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It took Sherlock almost ten minutes to break John's new password, which was nearly nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds longer than he'd been expecting. John had gone to a lot of trouble to come up with something harder this time. He wondered why the man had bothered.

He hadn't read very far before he knew why. Harry had sent John 138 texts over the past two weeks. Even Sherlock, with his usually almost-complete disregard for personal boundaries, was aware after the first five that these were not communications that John would have wanted him to see. Not that that stopped him, of course; on the contrary, it piqued his curiosity and he continued reading with interest.

The messages were generally better-spelled than the posts Sherlock had seen Harry leave on John's blog. He assumed that meant that she was not actually drunk when writing them, though their frequency, length (she appeared at times to be suffering from diarrhea of the fingers) and increasing bitchiness would otherwise have made him question John's belief that she was getting somewhere with her sobriety plan.

At first John had replied at least once a day. (Undoubtedly a mistake, his flatmate thought; it would only encourage her.) Then, unsurprisingly, John's answers tapered off.

Sherlock's mind automatically resorted the messages from oldest to most recent before filing them away for future reference. There had been eleven that morning alone:

 _-8:05 a.m.: John, why aren't you answering? I've been texting and texting you. One more time: I can't find those files and I can't get into my blog. And Ella says I need the blog if I'm ever going to get my life fixed up. Not that blogging's done much to fix YOU up, hahaha! (Except make you rich and famous, and what's the use of that if you can't be bothered with your only sister anymore LOL)_

 _-8:57 a.m.: John, where ARE you? You're the only family I've got now, you should be nicer to me than this!_

 _-9:13 a.m.: I'm the only family you've got too, you know._

 _-9:36 a.m.: God, you're a dick, John. Sometimes I really hate your bleeding guts, you know that, right?_

 _10:42 a.m.: Okay, I know why you're doing this. You think I'm not good enough to be worth bothering with, don't you? Everything's going great for you now and you think I'm going to drag you back down again-that's what this whole ignoring me thing is all about, right? You'd rather spend time with that crazy detective friend of yours, because he went to a public school and talks posh and is a genius and you've always liked people like that; that's why you were so determined to get into that grammar school, wasn't it, so you wouldn't have to be stuck at the comprehensive like me. You always had to do everything better than me, didn't you?_

 _10:59 a.m.: Okay, I know what you're thinking-I was a fucked-up mess so being better than me wasn't hard at all. Well, maybe that's true and maybe it still is, but I'm going to get better and you know what? You were just as fucked-up as I was,_ _ **if**_ _not worse, and you still are, under that "I'm fine, everything's cool" shell of yours, Johnny-Boy. But you're_ _ **never**_ _going to get better because you couldn't admit how fucked-up you were and you still can't, and admitting you've got a problem is the first step, there's no recovery without it._

 _11:03 a.m.: Worse. You_ _ **were**_ _worse, Johnny-Boy. (Johnny- **MY** -Boy—remember __**that?**_ _)_

 _11:45 a.m. Sorry, sorry,_ _ **sorry!**_ _I didn't mean all that, John, you know I didn't. And I shouldn't have called you you-know-what; that was below the belt, I know. Just you remember, though, John Watson—the family you come from was just as good as Sherlock Fucking Holmes's. Mum's dad was a vicar, for God's sake, and Granny a teacher—you can't get much more respectable than that, now, can you? And our Dad was a hero. (You're not the only one! :-)_ _)_

 _11:48 a.m. P.S. You really should come in for that family therapy, you know. It could help._

 _11:49 a.m. Sorry. I'm only bugging you because I care, you know._

 _11:59 a.m. Please do come and help me, John. I can't get through this on my own._

By the time he'd finished reading all 138 messages, Sherlock was aware of an unaccustomed longing for fresh air. Rain and cold notwithstanding, the thought—which he couldn't remember ever entertaining before—of going for a long walk in Hyde Park was positively alluring. He took his coat off its peg and headed down the stairs. He might not even mind if Mycroft were to appear and insist on walking with him: their relationship seemed suddenly easy, uncomplicated—almost refreshing.

There was half a packet of cigarettes in his coat pocket still. Halfway down the block he decided that nicotine was what his lungs were longing for more than fresh air. He spent the rest of the evening smoking steadily, thinking about the Spanish Leather-wearing intruder and the contents of John's cardboard box, and wondering with an increasing sense of discomfort why Mrs. Hudson wasn't back yet and whether he'd been right in assuming that the imprints of her second-best shoes in the hall carpet meant that she was spending the evening out with another woman, not a tall, well-off, well-dressed man.

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	6. Chapter 6

Author's Notes:

My heartfelt thanks to the anonymous guest reviewer who pointed out the inconsistencies in the last chapter; they've been corrected now. I'm also very grateful, as always, to Fang's Fawn, for her willingness to talk about my ideas with me, and her very helpful editorial suggestions for the parts I sent her. And to my dear friend in London, Liz, for taking the time to find out where Greg and John might go for a drink and what they'd have there. Neither Liz nor Fang's Fawn has had the time or opportunity to look this whole story over, though, so any mistakes I've made—and I'm sure there are many—are entirely my own.

I should mention that I owe my thoughts about the effects of John's shoulder injury which Sherlock deduces in this chapter to the stories of BlueSkye12, so my thanks to her as well for thinking that issue through so carefully and writing about it so movingly.

Oh, and a warning for a smattering of swear words again. I hope no one's too offended by them.

Chapter 6:

John spent the next two hours trying to solve Harry's computer problems, without success.

"The blog thing is probably an issue with the host site," he told her for the twentieth time as he was shrugging himself into his coat and was—finally—poised to make his escape. "And your computer might have picked up a virus that's only targeting the most recent Word files. Keep trying to contact the site's support staff. I'll ask around about the virus; if there's one like that going around, I'm sure they'll have heard about it at the Yard."

"You think my stuff is gone for good, though?"

"I honestly don't know. A good forensic tech might be able to recover it from your hard drive, or your site might have a backup system. But if it is—you've written it once, Harry; you can write it again."

"Really?"

"Really. It came from you; anything that matters will still be there. It'll probably come out even better the second time round."

"You think so?"

"Of course. You're good at this. You always were."

Her face changed then, the wobbly, post-tears smile she'd been struggling to put on turning suddenly strong, warm, and full, like sunlight breaking through the clouds on a rainy day. It made her look so like their mother that John felt his breathing hitch and his chest spasm. He turned his face away.

"I've got to go," he said in the direction of the door knob.

"Thanks, John," she said softly as he stepped outside. "Thanks for everything."

He nodded and walked away very quickly without looking back.

000000

John discovered that he'd left his mobile at home when he tried to call Greg Lestrade after leaving Harry's. He considered going back to Baker Street and leaving Greg for another night-his leg was giving him trouble and he was tired-but the prospect of spending yet another evening cooped up with a surly Sherlock was sufficiently unappealing that he decided to swing by the Yard and see if he could dig Greg out for a drink instead.

The sergeant on the front desk recognized John and phoned up for him. Greg was quite willing to be dug out. They went around the corner to a place that was popular with the Yarders and—since it was late enough that the big post-work rush was starting to thin out—were able to find a table out of the immediate fray where they could talk.

John ordered a couple of pints of bitter and told Greg about the Major's missing medals and the reasons for taking the idea of a theft seriously; Greg said he'd get the right people onto it and make sure the Major was treated respectfully about it. With some embarrassment John also brought up his sister's computer troubles; the D.I. said he hadn't heard of any computer viruses like that, but he'd ask around.

"I've got a favour to ask of you, too, mate," he said, as he ordered the next round. "Tell that horse's arse you live with that if I lose my job over this Astor Mews case, he won't be able to count on the next guy wanting anything to do with consulting detectives, or wasting his time finding puzzles to keep geniuses from getting bored and going round the twist, you know what I mean?"

"What's the Astor Mews case?"

"Hasn't he told you, then?"

"He probably texted me about it, but I forgot my phone this morning; I've been out all day without it."

"Oh, _that's_ why you didn't come along with him. I wondered. Well, it's like this—" And Greg explained the case.

"And they put your squad on it because—?" John was surprised: small-scale break-ins and thefts weren't Lestrade's usual territory.

"Because Downing Street's got their knickers in a twist about a possible security breach, and they asked the Commish to put his top squad on it."

"And he chose you. Congratulations."

Greg scowled at his beer.

"Yeah. Unfortunately, he also made it clear that I can look forward to spending the rest of my career filing if we don't get results soon. And I don't know what's got into our consulting git. He'd obviously got something all worked out when he was at the house, and usually nothing makes him happier than trotting out his deductions in front of an audience, especially if he can make me look stupid while he's doing it, but—well, if it wasn't so unlike him, I'd have said he knew the answer all right but didn't want to tell me."

"That's odd."

"Yeah, isn't it? Frankly,"—Greg glanced over his shoulder to make sure there was no one close enough to overhear him—"this is all getting a lot more political than I like. 'Cause the obvious answer is that _nobody_ broke in, right? That these chaps are trying for an insurance diddle and the pictures are sitting in their safe right now. Or this art-dealer bloke has sold them on the sly, doesn't want his boyfriend to know about it, and thought he could collect on the sale price _and_ the insurance, too."

John nodded. It certainly seemed a much more likely scenario than a thief somehow slipping past the Met's most sophisticated security arrangements to enter and leave a heavily guarded house undetected, or managing to corrupt the country's top agents over a relatively small-scale art theft.

"But I can't just go to a judge and demand a search warrant for a Minister's private safe—or his partner's, either. With the Olympics just round the corner, there's a lot at stake: Downing Street is leaning on us pretty heavily over this; they aren't any keener on the idea of another sports minister being caught up in a financial scandal than they are on a security breach. I figured they might listen to Sherlock, though—what with that brother of his and all."

"Mycroft won't want to get involved, will he?"

" _Mycroft,"_ Greg said, not without some bitterness, "is the one who insisted I bring Sherlock into this in the first place. The message I got was that He-Who-Can-Get-Us-All-Fired was finding the frequency of his little brother's communications flattering but somewhat distracting at the moment, and would we kindly find something for him to do. He specifically suggested the break-in at Astor Mews as being right up Sherlock's alley. I wouldn't have thought it myself, but he wasn't so far off the mark. I had no idea the git knew anything about art."

"I wouldn't have guessed that, either. You never can tell with him, though; he says he deletes anything that doesn't matter to his work to make space for the things that do, but there's no predicting what he'll have decided matters or what doesn't."

"I just wish he'd _tell_ me what he saw at that house and what it means, y'know? Because he saw _something,_ I'm sure of that. He got all worked up about another painting and how you could see it had been hanging in the upstairs hall, and then down in the entranceway, and how it wasn't in either place any more. I asked Lance about it, and he said it was a small painting of no value, a portrait the Minister had painted himself, and they'd taken it down to their place in the country just a few days ago. Sherlock seemed to have everything worked out from that. I could have sworn he was about to tell me, and then he changed his mind."

"You couldn't tell why?"

Greg shook his head and drained his glass.

"No idea. I'd just told him about the security we'd had on since the Minister got his portfolio, and Sherlock said something like, 'Ah, yes—this man's husband, you said?' And then he looked down at his hands and picked at a nail. I'd never seen him do that before. It wasn't his usual jitters, where he's too excited to keep still. It was more like he was . . . unsure. Buying time. That's what he said, too, that he " _might be wrong_ " and needed more time to think about it. Sarcastic as hell, of course, but I thought he meant it, too—that last bit, anyway. But that's just bollocks; when has Sherlock ever been _unsure?"_

John could think of times, but he knew what Greg meant—it was unusual, to say the least, and it was hard to imagine what there could be about this particular case that would have produced that reaction from him.

"I'll talk to him about it tonight," he offered. "See if I can get him to cough up what he's thinking."

"Would you? That would be a big help. And I'll get someone onto your Major's missing medals, and ask around about your sister's computer virus."

"Thanks. Want another?"

"Would love it but"—Greg looked at his watch and sighed—"I'm afraid I've got to get going. Until I can prove that our security _wasn't_ breached, I'm supposed to be on this 24/7, more or less. And we'd only just wrapped up the Smithfield case. I think I've forgotten what my flat looks like, let alone my bed."

"I'll get home and give Sherlock a shove, then," John promised.

"Thanks, mate. I appreciate it."

John watched as Lestrade shrugged into his coat and plodded wearily back up the street in the direction of the Yard, and wondered what had made Sherlock clam up and how he should go about the tricky business of getting the world's most self-centered, stubborn berk to talk if he'd decided not to.

000000

Sherlock was working on his computer when John got home, the fire burning brightly beside him.

"I heard you got a new case today?" John said, hanging his coat up behind the door.

"I take it you've been out with Lestrade. The Feathers? No, of course not; The Sancutary."

"Because I've been drinking Fuller's ESB, which the Feathers doesn't offer, and you can smell it. Yes. You've been smoking Benson and Hedges—I can smell _that_."

"Oh, well _done,_ John." Sherlock didn't even look up from his screen. "I'm sure the fact that the packet's lying right here in plain sight had nothing to do with your ability to reach that brilliant conclusion."

John folded his arms and glared at him.

"I thought you'd quit."

"Boring."

"They'll kill you. You know that, right?"

"But not tonight. Tonight these cigarettes have been doing more than malt or nicotine patches can—" He kept typing with one hand and waved the other rather aimlessly in the air, as if trying to decide how that sentence should end.

"'To justify God's ways to man?'" John suggested sarcastically.

" _God_ is nothing but a human construct designed to keep the pathetically feeble-minded—"

" _Sherlock_."

"I'm sorry, John. I know you still cherish some belief—"

"You know absolutely _nothing_ about my beliefs or lack of them, but _I_ know when you're trying to change the subject, which you're doing now."

"You were the one who brought God into it."

"I rounded off the quotation you seemed to have in mind. And what are _you_ doing quoting poetry, anyway? I'm sure they crammed you full of it at school, but I'd have thought you'd have deleted it all by now."

Sherlock gave an exasperated sigh.

" _Poetry?_ "

"That line you were mangling with your nicotine patches there. But the _real_ subject, that I'm really not letting you change, is what the hell are you doing smoking again? We had an agreement."

"It sharpens my mind." To John's annoyance, he continued to tap at his keyboard. "I needed to think. Why are you still standing there, John? You have a chair."

John ignored this and stayed on his feet.

"What is it, the Astor Mews case?"

"Hardly. That one is painfully obvious. Only an idiot like Lestrade would have the slightest difficulty—"

"He's not an idiot, Sherlock."

"He's a complete idiot."

"He really isn't, but he _is_ in a difficult position that _you_ are partly responsible for."

" _Me?_ "

"Yes, _you,_ you great twit. You've been pestering your brother for a case, haven't you?"

"Mmm."

"He told Lestrade to find you one. In fact, Greg says, Mycroft requested—and you know what your brother's 'requests' mean at the Met and just about everywhere else—that you be brought into that one specifically."

Sherlock's brows pulled together sharply and he looked up from his computer for the first time since John had come in.

"And now Greg has to hang about waiting for you to dish out your conclusions," John went on, "because Big Brother will be cross if he doesn't, and because once you've gotten yourself onto a case these days there's a presumption that your opinion will be the one that matters."

"I don't give _opinions._ "

"Deductions, then. But the Commissioner wants Lestrade on the case 24/7 because, as it might already have occurred to you, a break-in at a Minister's house that's been under security protection from the Met's special forces has implications well beyond the value of the items that seem to have disappeared, especially when the Minister in question happens to be the one for Culture, Media and Sport and the Olympics are almost upon us. Greg had just come off another case when this one hit. He needs some sleep, Sherlock. He needs to stop stressing about what's going to happen to his career if he doesn't come up with an answer that Downing Street can live with. Everyone's waiting on your deductions. And he seems pretty sure you've got it all worked out, so why don't you just tell him what he needs to know?"

Sherlock continued to frown at a spot on the wall just over John's shoulder.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock blinked and looked back at John.

"What?"

"Why"—John's exasperation was evident in the way he paced the words out—"don't you tell Lestrade what you've worked out about the break-in at Astor Mews?"

"Oh, that? That's ridiculously simple. He'll know all about it in the morning, if he doesn't already."

John unfolded his arms and sank into his chair.

"You'll tell him?"

"I won't have to."

"Then how will he know?"

But Sherlock was tapping at his computer again, seemingly oblivious to anything else. Eventually John sighed and got up to make himself a cup of tea. He was dumping the teabag into the bin when he noticed two plastic pharmacy bottles on the worktop, both with his name on them.

"Sherlock, what the _hell—?"_

"I'm actually working on something here, John. Could you possibly refrain from shouting?"

"Where did you get these? No, scratch that, I know where you got them. What the fucking _hell_ do you think you're doing, going into my room, helping yourself to my meds, and—what have you been _doing_ to them, anyway? These are them, aren't they, all these little bits and pieces all over the worktop? If this was you looking for something to get high on—"

"Don't be ridiculous, John. I know much better ways to get high if I want to than dicing up your paracetamol and benzodiazepenes. Though I must say, I'm surprised and more than a little concerned that you have taken to dosing yourself with—"

"Sherlock, what is _wrong_ with you? I know you're a massive dickhead who thinks ordinary rules don't apply to you, and you have virtually no sense of personal boundaries, but going into my private room, helping yourself to my medications, and then destroying them in some sort of experiment is absolutely, positively, _beyond the pale!_ And don't think you can get out of this by prating about being _concerned._ I'm not enough of an idiot to fall for that; you're _never_ concerned about—"

"There's codeine in the paracetamol," Sherlock said softly. John was too angry to take his change of manner in.

"I know that! I'm a doctor, remember?"

"How long have you been taking it?"

"This would be your business _how?_ "

"Codeine can become addictive after—"

"I know exactly how addictive codeine can be! And how long it can be used by a man of my height and weight and medical history without risking a habit. Med school. Army surgeon. Doctor. Have you honestly forgotten?"

"Why are you taking it, John?"

John stared at his flat mate, his mouth a little open. Sherlock was looking down at the computer on his lap and flexing his fingers, but there was a quiet urgency in his voice that John finally absorbed; it wasn't something he was accustomed to hearing there. He drew in a long, deep breath and let it out very slowly, then another, before deciding that Sherlock, however improbably, really was worried about him and needed an answer.

"Because I'm not sleeping well, as I'm sure you know, and my effing shoulder hurts at night—that's why."

"Your shoulder?" Sherlock's surprise was evident.

"Yes, my shoulder. The one I got a bullet through. What else would it be?"

"I thought—" Sherlock hesitated for a moment, then said, almost awkwardly, "perhaps your leg."

"My _leg?_ "

"Your right leg. You've clearly been having trouble with it again, as you have with your left hand. Your difficulty with your hand is essentially physical: you sustained nerve damage in that arm when your shoulder was injured, damage that affected your ability to continue with your work as a surgeon. Your doctors must have considered the damage permanent as it resulted in the termination of your career—nothing else could explain the Army's decision to let such a highly-trained and valuable member of its medical corps go, particularly as you had no wish to retire. You no longer have the dexterity in that hand that surgery requires, but it does not normally tremble except when you are very tired or very bored, or possibly when you are under some unusual psychological stress—which for you does not include the kinds of situations that most men find stressful. As far as I have been able to determine, the trembling in your hand is annoying to you but not painful. Your leg, however, does seem to cause you pain, even though you were not actually wounded there. I have not yet been able to deduce the reason for this, but—"

"Yeah, I get it now. I'm not stupid enough to take codeine for pain I know is only in my head, Sherlock. Is that what you thought I was doing? You don't have to worry. I've been using it very sparingly. I'm not going to let myself get addicted to the stuff."

"Good."

"It's—nice of you to be concerned." John cocked an eye at his friend, thinking it was more than nice, it was bizarre. "Thanks."

Sherlock nodded, keeping his eyes fixed on his computer screen.

"But none of this tells me why you took my pills in the first place."

"To analyse them, of course."

"Just for something to do? Sherlock—"

"No, _not_ just for something to do! Don't be a bigger idiot than you have to be, John. While we were out someone entered the flat. He went into your room. I had to make sure he hadn't . . . introduced anything into your medications."

John sat down suddenly.

"Moriarty?"

"I don't believe so."

"Explain."

Sherlock explained, omitting only the fact that he had gone through John's drawers and looked in his box. He did not expect to succeed in deceiving John about this; he knew John would realize that Sherlock would have examined every inch of his room thoroughly in his search for booby-traps or spyware left by Spanish Leather.

It cost him something not to mention the box: he wanted very much to know whether Spanish Leather had taken anything from it, or whether there had, in fact, never been anything in it besides what he had seen there—and, in that case, _why_ there wasn't something else in it, at least one thing. And there were other questions as well that had occurred to him, questions about the photographs on top of the chest of drawers and in the box, which he badly wanted answers to.

But he knew quite well that John would not like being asked about the contents of the box. He would get angry again if Sherlock brought it up—very angry—and his anger would not diffuse as quickly as it had about the pills, since, interesting though the box was to Sherlock, there was no way he could present his curiosity about it as a concern for John's health. In the case of the pills that had had the advantage of being genuine, but John would see through a lie on that point at once.

The best choice was simply not to mention it. John would surely check the box himself, and if something was missing from it, would tell him. If not, Sherlock would have to find the answers to his questions some other way. Asking for Mycroft's help was, of course, unacceptable, and yet . . . For the first time in a very long time, Sherlock found himself almost tempted.

Half an hour later, John—who never had got to his first cup of tea—stood up and put the kettle on again. He was reaching for the milk when he thought of something.

"Did you test the milk and sugar, too?"

"The milk's gone off; I told you this morning to get more. I did test the sugar. It's just sugar, unfortunately."

"Unfortunately?"

"Arsenic would have made the analysis more interesting. And the eyeballs—I checked the eyeballs, but there's nothing hidden in them, either."

"No bombs? No spyware?" John pulled his teabag out and wished he had remembered about the milk.

"No. Pity. They'd be the perfect spot for one of Mycroft's cameras, don't you think?"

"Eye Spy?"

"Exactly."

Their own eyes met, and suddenly they both doubled over with laughter.

"They wouldn't see much in the fridge. The light only goes on when you open the door!"

"Wouldn't Mycroft love being surrounded by food, though, even in the dark?"

"He'd get an eyeful of Sally Donovan's expression the next time Lestrade stages one of his raids and she goes poking around in there."

"Or—John, why haven't I thought of this before? If we could get some Eye Spies into Mycroft's house we could catch him cheating on his diet. The pictures would be priceless! And think of his _face_ when I showed them to him!"

"Mycroft—would never keep—real eyes—in his—fridge—would he?" John thought he might choke he was laughing so hard.

"Glass ones, like fruit, in a bowl on his desk—it would be just like him. Oh, this is brilliant! If we could get enough little ornamental body parts I could tell him I'd put them together for him as a reminder of all the happy hours we spent playing Operation when we were children. I'd tell him I've told Mummy I got them for him, guilt him into keeping them out where she can see them when she visits . . ."

When they finally calmed down, and John had downed his cold and milkless tea, and yawned, and said it was time to head to bed, he picked up his phone from the table where Sherlock had left it for him (its message alert turned on high now) and went upstairs thinking that, while life with a genius detective was often irritating, frustrating, and at times infuriating, it had moments he wouldn't trade for all the polite and considerate flat mates in the world.

He didn't give any thought at all to checking the contents of the box in his drawer.

000000

A few minutes after John went upstairs, Sherlock finally found what he'd been looking for on his computer: the combination of letters that would let him into Harry Watson's old blog.

Her new one had gone online an hour before John had come home. It consisted of a short post beginning with a declaration that she was certain she had been the victim of cyber attacks against her computer and her old blog but she wasn't going to let the bastards keep her down, and ending with an effusion of gratitude for her little brother, who might not be as sure as she was that her work had been deliberately sabotaged but whose words of encouragement and praise she was going to take up like a battle-flag to wave in the face of her unknown enemies and carry with her as she pressed on into the fray.

By "fray," it seemed, she meant her struggle to write down in this blog the whole story of her life, no matter what it might cost her. Indeed, she said, she was more convinced than ever that she owed it to herself and to the world to record with unvarnished honesty even her most difficult and painful memories and her longest-held, most deeply-buried secrets, because these were what had made her who she was.

Sherlock had been alerted to this new post by a text from Harry sent to John's phone an hour ago, and had set himself the challenge of seeing if he could get into her original blog and recover what she had posted there. His lack of interest in John's sister had always been profound: he would never have considered giving her difficulties even this much of his attention if he hadn't been simultaneously so bored and so in need of distraction from his niggling concerns about Mrs. Hudson's whereabouts and the identity and intentions of Spanish Leather—though a less conscious motive when he started might well have been the possibility of being able to deflect John's anger over his missing pills (which Sherlock had no difficulty at all in anticipating) with the placating information that Harry's computer problems had been solved.

Afterwards he couldn't have explained exactly what process of reasoning led him to the answer. It was a hunch more than anything, although he would have said that he despised hunches. He still felt a jolt of surprise when he typed in the letters and they worked.

They were NHOJDNATEIRRAH.

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	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7:

Harry's old posts had been deleted, but the site had an automatic back-up system and it took Sherlock only a few minutes to restore them. His opinion of the hacking skills of Harry's opponent, which he had been keeping an open mind about, dropped to sub-basement level in light of this: her choice of passwords for her blog and her home computer must have been pathetically transparent for someone so patently lacking in experience to have broken them. Well, of course they were; this was Harriet Watson, after all, and Sherlock had always thought of her as completely brainless.

The first page that came back up featured a photo of Harry: an indifferent selfie taken in bad light and showing a fair-haired woman whose fine bone structure and large eyes would have made her pretty, perhaps even beautiful, if it hadn't been for the sulky, discontented expression that marred her mouth. It was impossible to tell from such a poor-quality snapshot whether the drinking had taken a toll on her skin, but there were no obvious signs of it. She had grown her hair out since the last (and, indeed, only) time Sherlock had seen her; it curled softly around her face now, making her look much younger and more vulnerable than her brother. In fact, Sherlock knew that she was the older of two as these things are usually measured, though clearly not in terms of competence or maturity.

He gave the first few posts a quick glance. They were the kind of maundering, confessional tripe that sent a shudder down his spine: she was a recovering alcoholic, she was in therapy. Her therapist had suggested that she write down her life story, and that she might even find it helpful to put parts of it online as a blog.

( _ **Why**_ _,_ Sherlock thought _,_ _ **why**_ _does that woman suggest these things? What possible use could it be to anyone to announce the details of their lives to the world at large? Did no one give any thought to the damage to the world of spewing so much domestic rubbish into other people's minds? It was worse than the state of the oceans_. . . .)

She hoped to reach out and touch the hearts of others with her story. Perhaps her courage in opening herself up ( _Good God!_ _ **Courage?**_ _She was revoltingly eager to expose herself!)_ would inspire others to do the same. (Sherlock sincerely hoped not. He could imagine nothing more appalling.)

"I am my mother's daughter," she wrote in her second post. ( _No, really? What a surprise! Who else's daughter could you possibly be?_ ) She had her mother's diaries still, along with all the family photo albums and other memorabilia. She had never looked at them before—they were packed up in boxes that had been gathering dust under her bed ever since they'd been handed to her—but she was planning to delve into them at last, in the hopes that they would remind her of details of her past she had forgotten, provide a context and shed new light on those events she did remember from her childhood, and help her understand better why she had become the person she was today.

Her third post concerned the book club she had joined. Sherlock yawned and decided that he had had enough of Harry Watson. But his all-but-photographic mind still registered and responded to the words on the page before he could close the screen:

She had been reading Karl Ove Knausgaard's "A Death in the Family," a recent release which apparently billed itself as an "autobiographical novel." Sherlock thought that the designation "novel"—a form of reading material he despised—surely negated any meaning that "autobiographical" might have held as a descriptive term, but this did not seem to have occurred to Harry. She was certain that this book—the first of a long series, most of which had not yet been translated from the Norwegian—was a brilliantly honest rendering of every facet of the author's life. Knausgaard had apparently entitled his epic work 'Min Kamp.' This left Sherlock wondering sardonically whether Harry had any idea what it meant. He himself had no difficulty translating it into either English or German: "My Struggle." "Mein Kampf."

This literary idol's unvarnished and unsparing accounts of everything he had ever thought or done and everyone who had ever had the misfortune to know him had apparently moved Harry to tears. They had also inspired her: if he could write a best-selling memoir, she announced firmly, so could she.

Sherlock snorted at that. He had long suspected John's sister of envying the success of her brother's blog and the significant improvement in his finances that had followed on Sherlock's becoming famous. Her reasons for undertaking this excruciating project of public self-examination and exposure was not, he felt certain, so much therapeutic as mercenary, and yet he could see that Harry was quite unaware of this and really imagined that she was about to give the world something important and interesting.

As he snapped his computer shut, Sherlock wondered, without the slightest sense of irony, at anyone related to John being so unlike him: so fuzzy-minded, so caught up in herself, and so willing to take for granted the tireless support of the man she was lucky enough to call her brother.

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For the next hour Sherlock paced restlessly about the flat, trying to find a new angle from which to think through the still-unsolved problems that were weighing on his mind and to distract himself from his growing concern about Mrs. Hudson.

Since Spanish Leather had spent time in her kitchen, he should show up on Mycroft's surveillance pictures from 221A, as well as on the tapes from the CCTV cameras outside the flat. Sherlock was still unwilling to ask for Mycroft's help in identifying him, but he was not entirely comfortable with the choice he was making. If Mrs. Hudson _had_ gone out with Spanish Leather . . . if she were actually in danger . . .

He picked up his violin, then set it down again. He needed to get a grip on himself; after everything that had happened today he couldn't risk letting his feelings slip out of control again. There was always that danger with music, though these days he could usually keep himself from being carried too obviously away when he played. That hadn't always been the case: it had been five whole years after that mess at Cambridge before he had been able to touch the instrument at all, longer still before he had let himself play anything more than exercises on it. So tonight he closed it back in its case and paced the sitting room restlessly instead.

It was with a sigh of relief that he heard a key turning in the front door lock, the sound of Mrs. Hudson's steps in the front hall. He was downstairs in a flash, helping her off with her coat and the silk scarf she was wearing tucked inside its collar, asking with his most artificial smile if she didn't want some tea.

A hint of Spanish Leather clung—along with several other, very familiar, scents—to her clothing, and there were short, silver hairs on her dress sleeve.

000000

"Thank you, dear," Martha Hudson sighed as she settled into a chair in her kitchen and watched Sherlock fill the kettle at the sink. "Whatever's got into you tonight, that you're being so nice to me?"

Her voice sounded sleepy and a little slurred.

"I'm always nice to you, Mrs. Hudson."

"Not like this, Sherlock, no. I'm terribly fond of you, you know, but you do like to be waited on hand and foot, no matter how many times I tell you I'm not your housekeeper. And poor John! The things you expect him to do for you."

Sherlock's back stiffened, but she prattled on.

"You want to watch out there, dear. You can't expect a man like that will be willing to do all your chores for you forever. He'll go and get a wife and a home of his own one of these days - or _someone_ who'll want to look after him a little sometimes, too."

"Nice evening out, Mrs. Hudson?"

Sherlock had no doubt that an evening that had included 30-year-old Glenglassaugh whisky and premium marijuana was one Mrs. Hudson had enjoyed very much indeed. She was more than a little under their influence still.

"Oh, it was _lovely,_ Sherlock _!_ And to think I almost spent it at the cinema with Jane."

"That would have been a tragedy, clearly. What did you do instead?"

"We had drinks at the Beaumont—such lovely cocktails—and dinner at Gaucho's. And then dancing at—oh, I don't remember where, but they were beautiful places, all of them. I wished I had remembered to put on nicer shoes, but I got ready in such a hurry, I forgot."

Sherlock gave himself a sharp mental kick for the mis-deduction. He'd been so sure the second-best shoes had meant a second-best date.

"You've had quite an evening, then," he said, forcing himself to keep the conversation going. The kettle was boiling; he searched in her cupboard for the tea tin and the pot.

"They're right there on the worktop, Sherlock. Yes, it was _so_ nice! Such a long time since anyone asked me out for a night like that, and a girl does like a little fun, you know. You should remember that if you ever find one, dear. It doesn't matter how old she gets; she'll never stop wanting to go out and have some fun. Or he, of course. Maybe you and John should—"

"Who was he?" Sherlock cut her off. "Where did you meet this perceptive and sensible man?"

The tea really ought to steep longer, but he wanted her to be sharp enough to answer his questions before she drifted off to sleep altogether. He poured a cup out and put it down on the table beside her.

"Sensible? Sugar's in the cupboard there, dear, just to your right, and I like a little milk, too, you know; that's in the fridge, of course. I'm not sure I'd call him _sensible,_ dear. Dangerous men aren't, usually; that's what makes them so _interesting._ "

"Dangerous?" Sherlock stopped moving, the sugar bowl still in his hand.

"Oh, quite dangerous, I think. That's why I wouldn't go home with him—well, that and not wanting to go all that way down to Chelmsford, such a bother, really, and no toothbrush or nightgown, at my age . . . And I did learn a thing or two from that last husband of mine. But, oh dear, I _was_ tempted. . . ."

Sherlock blinked several times.

"Sugar, Sherlock? Thank you. You're such a love. You really should find yourself someone, dear. I'm not sure John's the one for you, really. He'll be your friend forever if you'll let him and don't drive him away. But he does seem to like the girls that way, and that's not something most men can change, you know."

"What did he look like?" Sherlock demanded, reaching blindly into the fridge for the milk. _If you'll let him. If you don't drive him away._

"Look like? Awfully tired when he left today, I thought, but he always looks very nice anyway, even when you can tell he's just shattered, don't you think? Not exactly handsome—not like you, dear—and a bit on the short side, of course, but there's something about his face, just the same. And the way he moves—you can tell he's been an officer, can't you? It's a shame he got shot like that, dear boy. I'm afraid that shoulder of his has been bothering him lately, and his leg seems to have gone out again, and I really don't think he's getting enough sleep at night. You _should_ try harder to take care of him, Sherlock, dear. If you can make tea like this for me, you could do it for him too, surely?"

Sherlock put the milk down on the table, closed the fridge door and, for a brief moment, rested his head against it, suddenly feeling that he was really very tired, too, and that it would have been much nicer if Mrs. Hudson had stayed home and made scones or ginger cake and was plying him with them now, instead of going out on the town with a dangerous stranger and then coming home high and sitting in her armchair, making him wait on her and scolding him for not taking better care of John.

He pulled himself up straight, put his hands in his pockets, and glared at her.

"Not _John,_ Mrs. Hudson. This man you spent the evening with. What did he look like? What was his name?"

Not that it would be his real one, but it might be useful to know what Spanish Leather called himself when he was courting an old lady and persuading her to make a fool of herself for his amusement. Or perhaps for some other, more sinister purpose, like pumping her for information about the world-renowned detective who paid her for the dubious privilege of living upstairs and having to put up with her idiotic, unsolicited, and entirely uncalled-for thoughts about his flatmate. . . .

"Look like?" she asked vaguely. Her eyelids were drooping; she'd be asleep in another minute. For God's sake, he couldn't have this. He should have let that tea steep longer.

" _Look like,"_ he insisted, shaking her shoulder a little. " _Name._ "

" _Name?_ " she murmured, putting a hand over his and stroking it. "Why, Jack, dear. Jack . . . Now, what was the rest of it? . . . I can't quite remember. . . . "

" _How did you meet him?_ " Sherlock asked urgently, shaking her shoulder again, more roughly this time. She opened her eyes at once and slapped his hand quite sharply.

" _Stop that,_ Sherlock! You don't need to shake me; I'm perfectly awake. What did you say?"

"How did you meet this man, Mrs. Hudson? What did he look like?"

"Oh, he came to see about the gas meters! He was new on the job; he'd never been here before. He came to check the meters and then stayed and had some tea, and we got talking, and then he asked me if I was busy this evening and did I want to go out for dinner. He had such a nice suit with him in his bag, so I sent him upstairs to use your loo while I got ready. I knew you wouldn't mind. He'd been up already, you know to see about the meters, so he knew where everything was. He was _so_ pleased to see where you live, and ever so interested. We had a simply _lovely_ time talking about the two of you and your cases! He knew all about them. From the newspapers, and from John's blog, of course. He was _such_ fun to talk to, and so attractive. I was quite tickled when he asked if I'd like to go home with him—at my age! But it would have been a very silly thing to do, I know that, I wasn't _entirely_ myself and he was _definitely_ a bit risky. And I didn't do it, so don't look at me like that, Sherlock. Anyone would think I'd shocked you! You should know me better than that, dear boy. I wouldn't have thought anything I did could shock _you_."

Sherlock was frowning.

"What did he look like? He wasn't—" a thought he had dismissed earlier returned unexpectedly, and his voice sharpened with a sudden, entirely irrational, fear—"about my age, was he? Medium height? Dark hair?"

Of course he wasn't. There were the short grey hairs on Mrs. Hudson's dress, and those prints in the stair carpet _had_ to belong to a taller man than Jim Moriarty. It couldn't be him. It couldn't be.

"Oh, no, dear." Her voice was slowing down again, her eyes starting to close. "He was,"—she yawned a little, and rested her head on the back of her chair—"an older gentleman. Silver-haired . . . very distinguished-looking. . . ."

"Height, Mrs. Hudson?" He tried squeezing her hand this time, and found she opened her eyes just as readily as she had to his earlier treatment. "My height? Shorter? Taller?"

"Hmm? Oh, _quite_ a bit taller than you, dear. About six four, I would think. He was very well-spoken, though; he was like you that way. I was surprised he was working for the gas company, but with pension funds the way they are these days, you know, so many people can't get by on what they had put away. My friend Jane has had to go back to work as a secretary, at her age! And Charlotte Dickey. And Emma Stevens' husband. I'm so lucky to have this house, and you dear boys to help out. . . ."

Her voice trailed away. This time Sherlock could not wake her: squeezing her hand produced only a murmured, "Dear boy," and he found he could no longer bring himself to try anything harsher.

Her teacup began to slide down her lap; he caught it before it fell to the floor. He hesitated for a moment; then, slipping one arm behind her shoulders and another beneath her knees, he lifted her bodily out of her chair and carried her to the sofa, where he laid her down gently and tucked a cushion behind her head. There was an afghan draped over the sofa back; he twitched it off and spread it out over her, then turned out the light and left her to sleep off the effects of her exciting night out with the mysterious and, in her words, quite dangerous man Sherlock still thought of as Spanish Leather.

Before he left he looked up at the ceiling fixture and addressed the microphone hidden there.

"Look after her, Mycroft," he growled. "And if you don't find out who this Jack is and what he wants with John and me, I'll tell Mummy you sent me to do your dirty work for you at Astor Mews."

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John was exhausted; he fell asleep almost immediately, in spite of his leg and shoulder. He woke two hours later with a cry and found himself lying with the sheets twisted around him, covered in sweat. He lay there for a few moments, blinking, trying to think where he was. When it came to him he sat up and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, wishing he could scrub away the images still burning behind them.

Groaning a little, he got out of bed and walked back and forth across his room until his breathing steadied out. Then he lay down and tried to sleep again. His leg and shoulder were burning and throbbing with equal intensity, making him long for the codeine tablets Sherlock had destroyed. For a moment he actually considered going downstairs and picking the pieces out of the kitchen bin where he had dumped them when he was making his tea and cleaning up Sherlock's mess. The image appalled him.

Maybe Sherlock was right to think he was stupid enough to let himself get addicted. What kind of doctor was he, anyway? Could he really trust his own judgment when he couldn't tell the difference between the pain in his shoulder that was supposed to be real and the one in his leg that wasn't?

As he'd done almost every night since Baskerville, John turned over, gritted his teeth, and told himself to man up and tough this out. An hour passed, then another.

He had fallen into a fitful doze when, around 5:00 a.m., his phone rang. Groping for it sleepily he knocked it off his night table; he had to pull himself out of bed to retrieve it, his right leg screaming in protest as he leaned down to pick it up. He was sure the caller would have hung up before he pressed Talk, even surer that it would turn out to be a misdial, but he was wrong on both counts.

"John," Harry's voice sobbed into his ear. "Oh, John, thank God you answered! Someone's broken into my flat. I think they must have hit me, my head is killing me, there's blood _everywhere_ , the place has been trashed, my computer's gone, and I've called 999, but nobody seems to be coming and I don't know what to do. . . ."

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Two hours later Sherlock was still deeply asleep, dreaming that he was walking down the long gallery of a country house, looking at the paintings hanging there.

"Great-grandfather did that one, too," a familiar voice beside him was saying. "Just learning copies, you know, but they're not bad, are they?" "They're very good," he heard himself agreeing. "Do you really like them?" the voice asked, and he knew that its owner wanted him to say yes. So he said it: "Yes, I do." "I'm so glad," the voice said. "I've always been so fond of them, but I couldn't care as much about them if you said you didn't. Everything seems so much better when a friend likes it too, don't you think?"

Sherlock's phone must have chimed then, because he heard it in his sleep like an old clock chiming somewhere in the house he'd been walking through.

"Come on," that familiar voice said, and something inside him ached at the sound of it, though he couldn't think why. "The light's lovely now. If you stand right there, it will fall across your face just the way I want it to. Yes, play, please—it won't bother me at all, you know how much I like it. You play and I'll paint. I think I might get this finished today. . . ."

The phone went off again and Sherlock woke quite suddenly, sitting up and reaching for it before he even realized where he was. The dream disappeared as he read the text that had come in. It was from Lestrade:

"It's murder now. Get yourself to Great Purlington, Essex, ASAP please. Will send car to meet you at the station."

Sherlock was dressing hastily when his phone rang. He looked at the caller's number and ignored it. It rang again and then, as he was putting his coat on, again. He was reaching for it to switch the sound off when instead of ringing, it chimed.

"Ignore Lestrade's text," this one read. "Do NOT go to Great Purlington before talking to me. MH."

Moving like a cat, Sherlock crossed the sitting room and stood beside the front window where he could look out without being seen. A familiar long black car was making its way down Baker Street.

When a groggy Mrs. Hudson had answered the front door and Mycroft climbed the stairs to his brother's flat, the minor functionary of the British Government found it empty. The window in Sherlock's bedroom was closed but unlocked. Which of the drainpipes, fire escapes, and rooftops had provided his escape route Mycroft could not immediately determine, but he saw no point in asking his beautiful assistant to call up the CCTV records. Sherlock, he was well aware, knew the exact location of every camera for miles around, and multiple ways to avoid them.

" _Dear_ little brother," he sighed. "For just once in your life, couldn't you trust me?"

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	8. Chapter 8

Author's Note: I'm afraid there are more profanities in this one. My apologies for that, and also for my creative approach to Essex geography and Conan Doyle canon. Little Purlington, as fans of the original stories will remember, was a village created by Conan Doyle in "The Adventure of the Retired Colourman"; Great Purlington is my own creation, as is my relocation of both Purlingtons to a point closer to Maldon—and so to Chelmsford—than Frinton. The still-smaller village of St. Mary's Wold and the nature reserve of the same name are also entirely invented places, though the latter is loosely based on Danbury Commons and Blake's Wood near Chelmsford, which I have relocated several miles to the north and west and embellished with extra acreage by my addition of an old and overgrown estate abutting the Wold.

For anyone not familiar with "The Retired Colourman," I should perhaps explain that in it we meet another private detective whom Holmes refers to as "my friend and rival, Mr. Barker"; he is investigating the same case as Holmes, and they join forces towards the end of the story. It occurred to me that, in a world in which the original Sherlock Holmes apparently never existed, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might have written the adventures of a Detective Barker instead—which explains Sherlock's otherwise quite peculiar answer to the young man who sells him his ticket at Liverpool Street station.

Chapter 8:

In spite of what Harry had said on the phone, John was taken aback when she opened her door and he saw the catastrophic mess the burglars had left behind. The flat could have been hit by a tsunami: every drawer pulled out and dumped unceremoniously on the floor, every cupboard opened and its contents strewn around the room. Clothes and papers had been flung over every surface, along with books, CDs, photographs, and most of the contents of the bathroom and kitchen.

Only the glassware, crockery and unopened tins had survived intact, though John did not register this fact at first. After the first moment of shock he fixed his attention entirely on his sister, who was holding a damp flannel to her face and looking distinctly groggy.

"Let me take a look at that," he urged her.

"Can I sit down? I don't feel so good."

"Here," he said, sweeping some papers off a chair. And then, "Have you just been standing here ever since you called me?"

"Looking through things, trying to see what they took. Ouch, fuck it, John, that _hurts!_ "

"Sorry. It looks like you were hit on the back of the head with a cosh of some kind, and you cut your face up when you fell. Your nose is broken, but I don't think anything else is—we should get a scan to be on the safe side, though. You've got a concussion for sure; you're going to have a nasty headache for a while, I'm afraid, and a pretty sore face."

"Got it now."

"I'm not surprised."

"I hurt all over, actually."

"I'm sure you do. You went down face-first on a hard floor; you'll be bruised everywhere. When do you think it happened? Do you remember anything about it?"

She shook her head before she remembered not to.

"Ow. No. The last thing I remember is going to bed. I must have got up to go to the bog. I was lying on the floor in there when I came to; there was blood all over the tiles and rug and everything."

"Any idea when it might have happened?"

"Not sure. Maybe 3:00, 3:30? I sometimes have to get up then. It's all the fucking tea; the booze never did this to me."

"Mmm-hmm."

"Really, it didn't. I could go all night, didn't matter how much I'd drunk, but tea just goes right through me now. Why d'you care? You're not the coppers. And where the hell are they, anyway?"

The ring of the doorbell answered that question with theatrically good timing just as John was explaining that he wanted to know how long she'd been unconscious. He went downstairs to let the police in and introduced himself. If they realized he was Sherlock Holmes' blogger, they gave no indication of it. The paramedics arrived moments later and repeated John's examination of Harry's injuries. There was some discussion about whether or not she needed further professional attention—she was quite insistent that she didn't want to go to A&E or Urgent Care, John equally insistent that she should—but in the end she consented to go if he went with her.

Unsurprisingly, the waiting room at the UCC was packed, even at 7:00 in the morning.

"What's the point in having a brother who's a doctor if that doesn't let you miss the queues?" Harry grumbled as she squeezed into a seat between a woman in a pink hijab who was trying to comfort a sobbing toddler and a heavy-set, heavily-tattooed man who looked like he'd been in a fight every night since he'd turned twelve and had lost the last one badly.

"CT scan," John said for the fifteenth time. He was still on his feet; there were no other seats. "Otherwise known as X-ray Computed Tomography. I don't have a machine."

"Well, why the bloody hell not? Shouldn't your clinic have one?"

"They cost a lot."

"Thought you were rich and famous now."

"I'm also not about to ask my sister to take her clothes off so I can examine her properly."

She eyed him sideways, taking that in.

"Good point," she said at last. "I hadn't thought of that."

" _Good,"_ he said, fervently. She laughed, even though the movement jarred her battered face. He grinned too, then said, more soberly,

"Look, Harry, you're going to have to answer more questions for the police. Do you have any idea what else they took?"

"Just what I said: my computer, my phone, my jewelry. I was trying to figure out what else was gone when you came, but it's all such a fucking mess. God, John, why did they have to do all _that?_ "

"Some prescription drugs are in high demand on the streets. They were probably looking for those, or any other recreational substances you might have had on hand, as well as the electronics and jewelry."

"I suppose. But why go through all my papers? I had a big box of old photos and journals by my desk. Who'd keep drugs _there?_ They dumped it out and tossed the stuff all over the place."

"Most burglars aren't the smartest people in the world, and more than half of them are good and stoned while they're doing it."

"Stupid buggers. And—oh, John, I've just remembered! I had one of Mum's old journals on my desk. I've been reading through them—she really wrote well, you know, and I wanted to put bits of them up on my blog and in the memoir I'm writing. This one had a red cover, but I don't remember seeing it in all that stuff on the floor. You don't think they would have taken _that,_ do you?"

"No, of course not. You'll find it under something else."

"Oh, God, I hope so. I'd really hate to lose that. I hate this whole thing; I _despise_ it. It makes me feel—I don't know, _violated_ somehow. Total strangers sifting through my stuff, looking at things nobody but me was ever meant to see, and not even caring about them, just trashing them like they were nothing. Christ, why do people have to be such fucking _brutes_?"

Her voice choked suddenly and her eyes started to water.

"You okay?" John asked with concern. Ignoring the protest from his right leg, he squatted down in front of her and offered a tissue.

"Thanks. Yeah, I will be. Sorry." She snuffled, then winced and dabbed gingerly at her swollen, bloody nose. "I'm just a waterworks these days, aren't I?"

"It's a normal reaction to trauma."

"Really?"

"Yes, of course. You were just attacked. People get shaken up when they're attacked, even when they _don't_ end up looking like they've been in a bar fight. Though I'll bet if you had been, the other bloke would look a whole lot worse."

She tried for a smile, but the tears were still flowing.

"Trauma?" she said through them. "You'd think I'd have gotten used to that long ago."

Their eyes met for a second; then they both looked away. John stood up, his right leg groaning.

"Look," he said, "I'm going to see how much longer this is likely to take. Want some tea?"

"Yeah," she said, wearily. "Sure."

She wasn't expecting anything else. They never really talked. They never had.

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The nurse, despite John's best efforts to wheedle information out of her, was not forthcoming, but he could see for himself that there was a roomful of patients ahead of them and several, including the crying child, were probably due for CT scans. They'd be lucky to get through in less than two hours; three or four seemed more likely. He found the vending machines and bought a couple of cereal bars as well as tea for himself and Harry. The woman with the child was called as he was coming back, which meant he could finally sit down.

His phone had been buzzing all morning, but he'd been too preoccupied with Harry to look at it and had eventually turned the ringtone off. He was just taking it out to check his messages when the nurse looked up and asked if a Dr. Watson was in the room. When he went over to her desk she said, in flustered tones that seemed to belong to an entirely different woman to the one who'd stonewalled him just minutes earlier, that Dr. Nguyen would see his sister at once.

John now found himself in the difficult position of having to point out that there were still people ahead of them and he and Harry were perfectly capable of waiting their turn. The nurse seemed to be even more flustered by this, but kept insisting that they had to go through now. As they walked past the other patients, one older woman gave them a very dirty look and said, in piercing tones, "Queue-jumping, now! And that woman _countenancing_ it! Can the NHS sink any lower?" John, thoroughly embarrassed, was inclined to agree, but he resisted the temptation to say so and followed the nurse and Harry to a small examining-room where Dr. Nguyen—an attractive, thirty-something woman he would have wanted to flirt with under different circumstances—was waiting for them.

An astonishing twenty-four-and-a-half minutes later they were walking out of the building, CT scan accomplished, Harry's nose—the only break found—set, and a prescription for painkillers in her hand. The reason for this extraordinary expedition was made clear when a long, black car pulled up at the kerb and the woman John still thought of as "Not-Anthea" stepped out.

"Mr. Holmes has been trying to reach you," she said crisply, and handed him her phone.

"Ah, Dr. Watson," Mycroft's voice spoke in his ear. "I'm sorry to have to disrupt your morning, but against my advice my brother has foolishly gone off by himself to investigate a murder in the country; he will be needing you to join him there as soon as possible. This car will take you and Harriet to Baker Street, where I'm sure the good Mrs. Hudson will be only too glad to look after your sister while she recovers from her injuries. If there is anything you usually take with you on these expeditions that you wish to equip yourself with, that would be the time to do it."

" _Explain, Mycroft_ ," John hissed, but he was already waving Harry into the car and climbing in after her.

"I'm afraid that would take considerably more time than I have to give this morning," Mycroft replied. "And my _dear_ little brother would not appreciate it in any case. The car will wait for you while you take your sister in to Mrs. Hudson and get what you need, but please return to it quickly. Sherlock really should not be left to his own devices on this case any longer than necessary."

There was a click as Mycroft disconnected the call. Not-Anthea took the phone out of John's hand and disappeared behind it, as usual. Harry looked at her brother in bewilderment.

"Friends in high places," was all he could think of to say.

Mrs. Hudson welcomed Harry with coos of sympathy and a great bustling about for tea, comfortable chairs, pillows, blankets, footstools, ice packs, and sweet things to eat. John ran upstairs and got his gun.

The long black car wove through the city traffic with remarkable speed to Chelsea, crossed the Battersea Bridge, and whisked along the south bank of the river until it turned onto a wide, paved jetty.

When he saw what was there, John groaned out loud.

"Oh, no," he said in the general direction of Not-Anthea. "Not this again."

She smiled enigmatically and handed him her phone.

"Thank you, John," Mycroft's voice said without preamble. If it hadn't been Mycroft Holmes, John would have said the man sounded genuinely grateful. "Look after him, please."

" _Damn it,_ Mycroft!" John spluttered. "What's going on? Where is he? _Is he all right?_ "

But Mycroft had already disconnected. John glared at the phone in frustration, then shrugged and handed it back to Not-Anthea before getting out of the car, ducking his head, and running towards the transport waiting for him.

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Sherlock ran and leapt over roof tops and back alleys for several blocks before descending to street level in a secluded spot he knew would be out of sight of CCTV cameras. Here he pulled an ordinary felt fedora from a pocket, shook out the creases, and stuffed it over his hair; added sunglasses; exchanged his blue scarf for a black one; buttoned up his coat; turned the collar down; and finally, adopting the hurried and graceless walk of the ordinary commuter, slipped out of the alley, walked around a corner, and—in spite of his usual distaste for this means of travel—descended into a Tube station. A few minutes later he emerged at the Liverpool Street station, where he bought a ticket to Great Purlington.

There was some irritating confusion over this that threatened to delay him: the ticket-seller, who was young and clearly new to the job, seemed to think that Sherlock wanted to go to Little Purlington and that it must be near Frinton-on-Sea. Sherlock was opening his mouth to make an acid remark about the exceptional idiocy of a railway employee being unaware that both Purlingtons lay much closer to Maldon than Frinton when a thought struck him, and he changed his comment mid-stream to say that when the famous literary detective Barker sent his friend and a suspect into Essex on a fool's errand and told them that Little Purlington was near Frinton, he was obviously attempting to prolong their journey by sending them in the wrong direction and forcing them to re-trace their steps. The young man gaped at him and asked how he knew what he'd been reading; the book was tucked away in his backpack under the counter, where he was sure as fuckety-fuck nobody could see it. Sherlock smiled enigmatically, tapped the side of his forehead, took his ticket, and strode away, leaving the youth to check frantically under the counter and then, assured that his book was indeed quite invisible, pull out his phone and google, "Where can I get x-ray sunglasses?"

While he was waiting on the platform, Sherlock, who had texted John three times from three different roof tops, looked around impatiently and a little anxiously for his blogger, but when the 7:46 pulled in John was still nowhere to be seen. The detective spent the journey checking his messages and texting his friend, with no better results than he'd had the day before.

The train arrived in Chelmsford at 8:20. To Sherlock's annoyance, he then had to leave the station, walk across the center of town, and wait another 21 minutes at the bus station before the right bus pulled in. He arrived at the Great Purlington station (a small Victorian building that had once served a branch rail line, now long out of use) about 10 minutes later.

A police car was waiting for him. The driver was a pudgy and freckle-faced local constable who recognized him at once (Lestrade had shown her a picture) but seemed at first to have nothing to say except, "You're Holmes? Get in then."

As he had during the bus ride from Chelmsford, Sherlock spent the drive alternately checking his messages and glancing out the window, taking in all the data he could about his surroundings. Chelmsford was a county town, prosperous in its own right and nowadays a popular bedroom community for London commuters. He knew that Chelmsford District was part of the Metropolitan green belt, but had been unsurprised during the bus ride to see that the countryside beyond the town was covered with the kind of housing that passes, to many city dwellers, for "country living": 20th-century faux Tudors mixed with some genuinely old and (generally) expensively renovated farmhouses, almost all on lots of a couple of acres or less. Occasionally, however, larger groups of fields dotted with sheep, horses, or cows intervened between the driveways and garden hedges, or a narrowing of lot size followed by a sudden switch to terraced houses rising almost directly from the edge of the road signalled their arrival at a village like Great Purlington.

Five miles beyond Great Purlington they passed over an ancient, single-arch stone bridge and then through a tiny village with no shop but a comfortable-looking pub called the Cricketers' Arms. Not long after this the land began to change. Nothing in that part of Essex could be called hilly, Sherlock thought, but the road began to rise and fall more noticeably, and a wood appeared on the far side of the car and continued to run alongside it for some distance as they drove. Sherlock's brows drew together; he hadn't thought there was such an extensively treed area in Essex anywhere south or east of Epping Forest.

"St. Mary's Wold," the policewoman at the wheel said suddenly, giving Sherlock the unaccustomed and distinctly uncomfortable feeling that she'd read his mind. "That village back there's got the same name."

"Nature reserve." It was a statement, not a question, but she replied as if he had asked.

"Mostly. There are some private woods that back up on it, too, part of an old estate. The house is a ruin—burned down almost a hundred years ago—and some conservancy group or other is always trying to raise money to buy the place, but they haven't made the asking price yet."

Sherlock said nothing, wishing she would read his mind again and see the disinterest screaming there. But the constable seemed to feel she had to make up for the time lost to silence earlier; she kept talking.

"Used to be one of those grand gardens, with fountains and a grotto and one of those funny hidden walls for keeping sheep out—a ha-ha, that's what they call it. Took fifty men to look after, my granddad said his grandfather told him. You'd never know it now, would you?"

"In there?" Sherlock was startled into asking. It seemed unlikely: there was nothing but trees on that side of the road, though on the other an expanse of gently rolling green was clearly a golf course. He had been distracted by noticing the distant sound of a helicopter and wondered if he could have mistaken what she said.

"Yes, just in there, in all those trees. The drive is off another road. The place is all grown over now, of course, and the walls are tumbling down, but bits of the garden structures are still there, if you know where to look. You have to be careful if you walk off the paths; the ha-ha can take you by surprise, and there's quite a drop from the top in places still. It was the highest one in the country once, they say. Twelve, fifteen feet in places. Petworth's only nine." She paused, as if expecting some response.

When none was forthcoming, she pressed on, undaunted: "There's a couple of bunkers in there, too, and some old trench work, though most of it's silted up now. My great-granddad helped build them in the war; the GHQ line ran through here, you know—though not right where the gardens were, of course. They built the line across the fields, to keep the Germans out if they tried to invade. The trees have all grown up since then. . . ."

 _Not_ _ **here**_ _,_ _they haven't, you_ _idiot,_ Sherlock thought pettishly, but didn't bother to say out loud. The wood had, in fact, just given place to open land again, though he could see the line of the trees curving away at the bottom of the fields they were now passing and then continuing along them, parallel to the road. At the tree line the land seemed to dip down a little as if towards a stream or river. _River,_ Sherlock thought, _the one we crossed on the bridge back at that village with the pub._

The fields were the usual patchwork of greens divided up by hedgerows. In less than a minute, though, a taller, better-groomed hedge came into sight: _privet, garden,_ Sherlock registered; _perhaps we're getting there at last._

They passed the hedge, a small cottage, and another hedge. On the far side of that was a tall iron-railed fence with spikes along the top, and then, about three hundred meters farther on, a pair of red brick gateposts supporting an elaborately-worked iron gate. The constable swung the wheel sharply to the right, applied her foot to the brake, and interrupted her history lesson to announce, "Oh, good, here we are!"—all at the same time. The car fishtailed a little on the muddy verge, making Sherlock think contemptuously how much better a job he could have done at twice the speed.

The gates were shut. A stand of silver birch and Scots pine blocked any view of the house behind them, but a brass plaque announced that they had arrived at "The Gables." The constable opened her door and leaned out of the car to push the buttons on a speakerphone. It crackled into life, she announced who they were, and a moment later the gates swung open and they drove in.

Beyond the treed privacy screen the graveled drive skirted a long, wide lawn, well-kept and closely-mown, and led up to a house that—given the statement apparently being made by the entrance gates—struck Sherlock as surprisingly modest: two stories, two chimneys, a centrally-placed door with only two windows on either side of it on each floor, and one above. _Old farmhouse,_ Sherlock thought. _Not a large one, though almost certainly bigger than it looks from here. There'll be more at the back. Georgian, probably Grade II listed, but thoroughly renovated inside._ And then, _What idiot decided to call it "The Gables"? That roof is hipped; there isn't a gable in sight._

A memory flitted across his mind then: the familiar voice he had dreamed of last night exclaiming, " _Look at that lovely hipped roof! They're so much more interesting than gables, don't you think?"_ He dragged it ruthlessly back to its proper place in the Mind Palace—a very small and dark underground room—slammed the door on it, and threw the bars across. He'd had quite enough of that yesterday; he was _not_ going to allow his thinking to be disrupted again today.

The driveway was a circular one. Sherlock was just getting out of the car in front of the house when he realized that the sound of the helicopter, which had been getting gradually louder as they drove, had become very much louder indeed and the craft was, in fact, hovering directly overhead and beginning to descend.

 _Mycroft,_ he thought with distaste. _Well, the whole police force knows I'm here; he can't stop me now._ He turned on his heel and stalked towards the door, then paused on the threshold, realizing that he could be seen from the helicopter. Mycroft would undoubtedly interpret his move (correctly) as a sign of fear or at least concern that his brother would somehow manage to keep him off the case if he didn't beat him into the house, rather than reading it as the statement of disinterest in and independence from Mycroft's ostentatious arrival that Sherlock wanted it to be taken as.

He turned back and stood with the constable, watching the helicopter land on the lawn. The door opened; a man climbed down and ran towards them.

It wasn't Mycroft after all. It was John.

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"My brother," Sherlock said, flatly, as John arrived panting at the doorstep.

It wasn't a question—he would never allow himself to phrase such an obvious deduction as a question—but he expected some sort of answer from his friend, probably a sardonic, "Well, I didn't hire it myself-we'll have to start asking for more money if we're going to fit helicopters into the budget-so yes, of course it was your brother who sent me here in that thing, you daft git."

What he got instead was the barest nod, as if John hadn't quite heard him but was acknowledging the fact that he was there. Well, perhaps he hadn't heard him: the helicopter was still making a lot of noise as it lifted off.

"What the hell's this all about?" John shouted over the row. His face looked taut and paler than usual, as if with worry, or possibly air-sickness.

"Didn't Mycroft tell you?" Sherlock shouted back.

"What do you think?"

"Ah. No, of course not. But he told you I was going to need your . . . assistance."

"Yes."

Sherlock's stomach clenched suddenly, an extraordinary reaction he wasn't expecting. He had known, after all; ever since getting Lestrade's text two hours ago he had known that there was at least a 50% possibility that it would go this way—no, more than 50%, significantly more. But instead of mastering his emotions properly, he'd allowed himself to . . . hope.

That was a mistake, another one. He'd been doing nothing but making them for the past twenty-four hours.

He tightened his mouth and schooled himself not to feel. Or, if he couldn't manage that—and he wasn't at all sure he was going to be able to—at least not to show what he was feeling.

"Come on," he said, and was pleased to find that his voice sounded as undisturbed as usual. "Lestrade's got a case for us. Unless I'm very much mistaken, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media, Sport, and the Olympics has been murdered."

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	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9:

The interior of The Gables was exactly what Sherlock had expected: high ceilings, wide-planked wood floors, graceful mantels and trim that looked as if they were mostly original. The rooms were furnished in a more traditional style than the Astor Mews house—wing chairs and overstuffed sofas, Turkish carpets, 19th-century oil paintings in heavy frames—though someone had edited the contents with a light enough hand that the effect was not overpoweringly stuffy.

As the constable gestured to the staircase on their left Sherlock could see, through an open archway, that his prediction about the size of the house had been correct: a big, conservatory-style extension had been added at the back. It housed an enormous kitchen whose old-fashioned features—slate floors, stone worktops, butler's sink, farmhouse table, the inevitable Aga—could not quite conceal the fact that they were all spanking new. Sherlock was aware of a faint odour of paint that seemed to permeate the ground floor. He could identify the maker easily: Farrow and Ball, in various shades of grey. The colourway was the only real similarity to the city house, although the artwork reminded him of the paintings in the upstairs hallway at Astor Mews.

As he climbed the stairs, Sherlock began to calculate the costs involved in adding on a new kitchen and carrying out what was obviously a very recent redecoration, or at least, a refreshing of the décor. The Astor Mews house had been done quite recently, too—though probably before this one, as the men would have wanted someplace undisturbed to live in while the work was carried out. Lance's doing, Sherlock thought. Presumably the elevation of his husband to the Cabinet had inspired this flurry of activity, but the Minister would have been too busy with his new appointment to be bothered about decorating his house, even if the state of the paint had been something he would have cared much about, which . . . .

Damn it. The calculations, which Sherlock had been well aware were no more than an attempt to distract himself from the scene awaiting him, weren't doing the job. He would have to try something else. The sound of John's rather heavy breathing behind him on the stairs was suddenly quite comforting.

"What d'you think?" he said, glancing over his shoulder with a smirk. "Feel like picking up an ashtray here?"

He thought his attempt at jocularity sounded a little forced, but John didn't seem to notice that. In fact, John didn't seem to have heard him at all.

Sherlock looked back over his shoulder again, this time more attentively. His flat mate was breathing heavily and holding onto the stair rail as if he actually needed it; his face looked a strange colour, like dishwater—though that could be a reflection from the walls, which had so recently been painted that Farrow and Ball grey. But John was clearly having considerable difficulty with the stairs. His leg, of course. It had been bothering him ever since Devon, since Baskerville. . . .

Sherlock jerked his face forward again and breathed out angrily through his nose. _Sentiment._ If he couldn't do better than this at controlling himself, Mycroft would never let him hear the end of it. And John would not appreciate having his weakness noticed. It was best to proceed as if he had seen nothing.

"This way, sir," the constable said when they reached the top of the stairs. "The body's in the dressing room, off the main bedroom."

"Oh, God." Sally Donovan glared at Sherlock as he walked into the bedroom. "Not you already, Freak. We've only just got here; I was hoping we'd be able to get some real work done before you started mucking about with the evidence."

"Snap," Sherlock replied, more acidly even than usual. "Is there a single surface you people have managed to leave untrampled?"

The bedroom was a large one, with two windows on the wall opposite the door and a fireplace at one end, but in spite of its size it seemed to be bursting at the seams with more than the usual number of men and women engaged in the tasks of a crime scene: taking notes, making measurements, dusting surfaces for fingerprints, and walking around messing up any clues Sherlock might have been able to find in the carpeting.

The faint smell of paint, which Sherlock had detected the moment he'd entered the house, was even more noticeable here—though he knew he was probably the only person in the room who was aware of it.

"Is that you, Sherlock?" Lestrade's voice called from an open door opposite the fireplace. "Come back here, will you?"

The door opened onto a narrow, windowless space that seemed to be undergoing renovations to fit it out as a walk-in wardrobe. One wall and part of another were already lined with built-in shelving, drawers, and hanging rods, while stacks of lumber in different lengths leaning against the remaining walls and the absence of any clothing indicated that the work was still in progress. The outline of a doorway had been pencilled onto the wall opposite the door to the bedroom, but it had not yet been opened up.

Sherlock took none of this in at first. His entire attention was fixed on the body lying huddled on its side on the floor.

It had once belonged to a dark-haired, slightly olive-skinned man of medium height and stocky build, perhaps some seven or eight years older than Sherlock himself, wearing grey flannel trousers and a dark shirt. One arm—the left one—was stretched out in front of the body, as if the man had tried to stop himself from falling as he collapsed, or as if he'd wanted something in the drawer that was standing open just a few inches from his fingers. The drawer, however, was empty.

Greg Lestrade looked up as Sherlock stepped into the room.

"Well, we're all up the creek now," he said, "and no mistake. It's that Minister the Met was supposed to be protecting, the Hon. Victor Trevor. He's been shot. He didn't do it himself; we can't find the gun, and the room was locked _from the inside._ The bedroom door was, too. No known keys—the agents said they'd asked when they were setting up the security, but Trevor said they'd never had one. No windows in this room, the bedroom ones shut—not even a crack where anyone could get in—no sign of footprints or ladder marks in the flower beds below, and the whole place has been crawling with protection for months. He'd been getting threats, you know, because of the Olympics. I guess whoever broke into Astor Mews must have been able to get in here, though God knows how _."_

He paused, expecting the consulting detective's usual, instantaneous response. But Sherlock didn't start rattling off deductions or leaping about the room looking for clues. He was standing motionless just inside the doorway, staring silently down at the body.

His face was as impassive as ever, but in his eyes Greg could see something that looked remarkably like pain.

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Sherlock's phone buzzed. Without taking his eyes off the body, he slid it out of his pocket and clicked it on.

"Sherlock," Mycroft's voice said quietly. "I'm sorry about this. Truly, I am."

Sherlock snorted.

"Platitudes, now? Sinking low, aren't we?"

Mycroft sighed. "Sometimes, little brother," he said, and his voice had none of its usual archness, "platitudes are all we have to fall back on."

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"Sherlock," Greg said, getting to his feet. "You okay, mate?"

Sherlock slipped his phone back into his pocket and looked at him, his eyes narrowed.

"You okay?" Greg repeated. "You look a bit dodgy."

"I'm fine." The edge in Sherlock's voice was so habitual Greg found it almost reassuring. "Why wouldn't I be?"

The D.I. sighed and decided not to push the point.

"You want to have a look?"

"Of course." Sherlock accepted a pair of gloves, knelt down, and began running his hand lightly over the man's body, examining his hair, the palms of his hands, the knees of his trousers, the soles of his shoes.

"John with you?"

"Right behind me. John?" Sherlock turned to look for his friend and was clearly surprised to find that the doctor was not, in fact, standing right behind him. It took him a moment to locate his flat mate among all the other people milling about the bedroom: he was standing beside one of the long Georgian windows, looking out.

" _John?_ " Sherlock called again, getting to his feet.

Sally Donovan put a hand on John's elbow.

"You okay?" she asked. His face looked grey and pinched. She felt a shudder run through him at her touch and took her hand away at once. He turned then and nodded.

"Bit of a headache, that's all. Damned helicopter; I've never liked the things."

"Me, either." The sympathy was genuine; she'd never been able to dislike John Watson, even though she hated the way he tagged along after the Freak. All the same, she regarded him with some suspicion—anyone who spent his time with that psychopath deserved it—so she eyed him warily as she added, with a touch of sarcasm, "Train wouldn't do?"

"Not my idea."

"John." Sherlock loomed over Sally. "The body?"

"Right." John turned away from the window, squared his shoulders, and crossed the room behind his friend. Sherlock stood back to let him enter the tiny room first. John squatted down beside the body and studied it with his usual care.

"What do you think?" Greg asked after a minute.

"As far as I can tell without a post-mortem," John answered, "it's what it looks like. He was shot once in the right side of the chest. There's no exit wound. I can't identify the ammunition for certain without seeing it, of course, but I'd say this was probably done with a .45 bullet. There's no visible sign of powder on the skin or clothes, though your pathologist will want to look more closely for that than I can here. The bleeding was largely internal. I'd put the time of death between three and four hours ago. He wouldn't have died immediately, though, so the wound could have been inflicted some time before that."

"How much before?" Greg asked.

"Hard to say for sure. Maybe as much as an hour."

Greg nodded. Sherlock blinked rapidly, turned away, and began to pace about the room.

"It's 9:30 now," Greg said. "He was found just before 7:00. His security agents tried to resuscitate him—they all have paramedic training—but he didn't respond."

Greg was expecting some acid comment from Sherlock about the absurd sentimentality of disturbing evidence by trying to resuscitate a dead man; he was surprised when the detective said nothing.

"So," he continued, "the time of death was most likely between 5:30 and 6:30, and the shot could have been fired any time between 4:30 and 5:30?"

"From what I can see, that's the earliest it could have happened, but a post-mortem will give more information that could make me change that opinion."

"Yeah, I know. It's just something to go on for now. Do you want to look at the body again, Sherlock? It's been moved, of course, when they tried to bring him back. Too bad, but it can't be helped."

"No."

Greg eyed Sherlock curiously, wondering what had got into him that he would agree with a statement like that, then decided that the detective was simply answering his question.

"What about the photos, then? One of the agents snapped some just before the others started trying to resuscitate—the best they could they do, under the circumstances, though he said they tried to put the body back afterwards the way they'd found it."

Sherlock put out a hand.

Greg stuck his head out the door and shouted, "Photos, Donovan!" Sally stepped over and handed him a phone that he passed to Sherlock, who scrolled through the pictures slowly.

John got to his feet and stood with Sherlock and Greg, looking at them, while Sally called in the crew to outline the body before bagging and removing it and starting the clean-up. The body in the pictures looked almost exactly like the one on the floor now, except . . .

Sherlock darted suddenly across the room.

"Bugger it," Greg said, still studying the picture. "They didn't put that arm back just right."

"Exactly," Sherlock said from beside the pile of lumber that was leaning against a section of wall where the wardrobe units hadn't been built yet. "The angle's wrong. The floor's a mess now—you might as well have brought in a herd of elephants to walk across it—but those smears of dried blood behind the body couldn't have been made by the agents turning him over to work on him; they're in the wrong place, and the blood would have been dry by then in any case."

"I never said they had been," Greg protested, but Sherlock ignored him.

"He collapsed just inside the door, then dragged himself farther into the room. That arm isn't stretched out because he tried to catch himself as he fell; he was trying to reach for something. He must have wanted it badly—he'd been shot in the chest; he was bleeding, going into shock; he must have been in terrible pain, but he still tried to get to it while he was dying."

"Something in that drawer?"

"There's nothing in the drawer. There wouldn't have been: the work in here wasn't finished, the workmen would be coming back—in fact, they'll probably show up any minute now—the place would be full of dust while they were working—no one would put anything they cared about in here until the men were finished. And you can see from the angle of the arm in those pictures that he wasn't reaching towards the drawer at all. He was reaching for _this._ "

And he picked up a battered-looking wooden frame or stretcher, about two feet long and a foot and a half wide, that had a piece of canvas stapled across the back of it.

"What's that?" Lestrade asked, sharply. "Not just lumber?" He had been around the room already himself and had seen nothing worth taking note of, only a pile of future shelves and drawer fronts for the new wardrobe.

"Not at all." Sherlock was studying the staples with interest. Two of them had come loose and stuck out sharply from the wood. They looked quite rusty.

"This," he said, looking up with a satisfied expression, "is the painting I drew your attention to at Astor Mews, the one that was moved from the upstairs hallway to the entranceway and so demonstrated what had happened to the other missing paintings, the, er, studies for Lewis's 'Hosh Courtyard of the Coptic Patriarch.'"

" _That?_ I never did work out what you were going on about with all that."

"Of course not," Sherlock murmured. "But it should have been obvious even to you, Lestrade. This,"—he showed no inclination to turn the painting over to see what it might look like; his only interest was in the back of it, with its distinctive pattern of rusty staples that corroborated his earlier deduction—"was moved from the upstairs hall, where marks from the edge of the frame and slight scratches from these rusty staples on the wall showed that it had hung at some time in the fairly recent past, to the ground-floor entranceway, where brighter traces of the same marks showed that the picture had been hanging there more recently."

"So?" Greg asked, somewhat belligerently. He'd been under a lot of pressure about the Astor Mews case, and had found Sherlock's attitude both bewildering and even more annoying than usual as a result.

"The paintings on the ground floor of the Astor Mews house are all large, modern abstracts. Those in the upstairs hall are all smaller and considerably more traditional, like the paintings in this house. Since it was originally hung upstairs, I knew without even seeing this that it must be similarly realistic, or at least, similarly unlike the art downstairs. The marks the frame had left on the walls made it clear that this piece was also far too small for an art professional like Lance to have thought it would work well next to the enormous modern painting that was hanging over the table in the hall. The proportions were all wrong; coupled with the difference in style from everything around it, it would have looked completely out of place. Lance would not therefore have moved the painting for aesthetic reasons. He must have had some other purpose."

"Which would have been—?" Greg had no idea where this was going. Neither had John, who had not, of course, seen the Astor Mews house. He tried to picture it now. It was something to focus on, like his breathing.

"Lance told you they had taken that painting down to their country house—this house—recently. So it was hanging in the Astor Mews entranceway not long ago. Victor Trevor was made Minister for whatever that mouthful of portfolios is—Culture, Media, Sport, and the Olympics—two months ago. They would have thrown a party to celebrate the occasion. They moved this picture to the entranceway because they wanted it to be one of the first things their guests saw when they arrived."

"But Lance said it wasn't worth anything. Valueless, just something his husband had painted."

Sherlock smiled sardonically.

"Rubbish. Can you actually imagine a noted art expert like Lance _choosing_ to display a worthless piece of amateur art in the entryway of that meticulously designed house?"

"Maybe Trevor liked it? If he'd painted it, he might have been fond of it and insisted on their putting it there. Or Lance might have done it to please him."

"In which case, they'd have left it there. No, they hung it there for some particular reason, but took it down afterwards because it was no longer needed and didn't really suit their style. And by 'they' I mean Lance; Trevor would have been far too busy to take time out from his new job for interior decorating."

"This is ridiculous," Phil Anderson muttered.

"Yeah," Sally agreed, even though Phil happened to be anything but her favourite person at the moment. They had crowded into the little room when Sherlock started his explanation. She was leaning against a bank of drawers now, her arms folded belligerently across her chest. "A man's been murdered and we're talking about home décor? We should be getting on with the investigation."

"In a minute, Donovan," Greg said. "This is important. You don't really think these two cases are unrelated, do you?"

Sally tightened her arms and dropped her eyes, biting her lip. Sherlock continued.

"Lance was a well-known art dealer. His reputation would suffer if guests saw inferior work prominently displayed in his house. And if he just wanted a painting there, he had what should have been a much better choice. If he was as fond of the Lewis paintings as he said he was, why didn't he hang them in the entryway instead? The two together would have provided a better balance for the big painting over the hall table than this one on its own. Lewis's work has become highly collectible—some of it has fetched up to a million pounds—and the Tate's copy of the 'Hosh Courtyard' has been splashed all over London on bus-shelter posters for weeks; studies for it would have been guaranteed to impress anyone who walked in. Why choose something else, then?"

"Because that one's worth more?" Greg hazarded.

"Exactly. But _why would it be worth more?_ "

"I dunno. I haven't even seen it yet, and neither have you."

"You shouldn't have to see it. There was nothing else of distinction in that upstairs hallway—just the usual, conventional landscapes, still lives and portraits by artists no one's ever heard of. Decent enough, or they wouldn't have had them up at all, but nothing special. What makes you think the missing pictures were any better?"

Greg closed his eyes and groaned.

"You mean they weren't really what Lance said they were at all. They weren't originals, and they weren't stolen. He was lying. It was just an insurance scam."

"Precisely. They weren't originals at all; they were copies made over a hundred years ago by a talented student painter—not forgeries, but what are called learning copies, and unfortunately left unsigned."

"How the hell do you know that?" Anderson demanded. Sherlock ignored him and kept talking.

"Lance is a well-known art expert who consults with the Tate. Either the insurance company accepted his word that the paintings were Lewis's own studies for the Tate's painting, or he faked the documentation necessary to convince them."

Greg whistled. "But _why?_ He had a fine career going. If that got out, he'd be ruined."

"Indeed. He must have needed the money very badly to take such a risk. Both this house and the Astor Mews one have been extensively renovated quite recently, and that kind of work doesn't come cheap. It was probably Lance's taste driving the expenditures; he was wearing the latest in Dolce & Gabbana the day I met him, while the clothes Trevor had on when he died were good quality but nothing flashy, and so well worn that a man like Lance would have thrown them away long ago. Look at the creases in the belt, the way the knees of the trousers are beginning to sag, the wear on the shoes."

Greg, who was still holding the phone, zoomed in on one of the photos. Everyone gathered around to look. Of course, Sherlock was right.

"Those aren't the clothes of a vain man living beyond his means," Sherlock went on. "And there's nothing in Trevor's history to suggest that extravagance was his style. A glance at Who's Who will tell you that instead of going into industry or a law firm he spent his twenties and early thirties as a student at various universities, earning one degree after another, until he got interested in politics and stood for Parliament—where I believe he earned a reputation for intelligence and integrity. No, it would have been Lance who was spending the money; Trevor probably had no idea he'd got them in over their heads. You might want to look at the books for Lance's art dealership. If he was in trouble there too, he'd have had plenty of incentive to risk diddling his insurance company over some pictures he'd probably never even liked. They were utterly different from the work on display on the ground floor."

" _Damn it_ ," Greg cast a frustrated look at John. "I told you insurance fraud was the obvious answer, didn't I, John?" The doctor nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "You did. But you didn't have a way to prove it."

"Not without getting a warrant to search their safe at Astor Mews, and this house. And the Powers That Be weren't going to like it if I asked for one, not for their new Minister, not after the last scandal and with the Olympics just around the corner. Damn it, why couldn't you just have _told_ me, Sherlock? With your deductions to back me up I would have asked for a warrant. Number 10 couldn't have kicked up a fuss then, not with you on the case, and your bloody brother would have been satisfied. Jesus, that isn't why, is it? I know you don't get on with him. Were you just trying to do him one in the eye at my expense?"

Greg tried not to sound hurt but knew he hadn't entirely succeeded. Drugs-busts or no, he'd been a pretty good friend to Sherlock over the years; he'd always thought Sherlock knew it and was grateful, in his own strange way.

Sherlock looked surprised and a little hurt himself.

"Mycroft's preferences," he said with dignity, "never crossed my mind. They rarely do. I certainly wouldn't let them interfere with a _case._ "

"Oh. Well." Greg cleared his throat, embarrassed by his show of emotion. "Let's see what this one looks like, then."

"Ah. Yes." Sherlock might almost have been embarrassed, too. He turned the picture around so that everyone, including himself, could see it for the first time.

When he did, his eyes went wide and his hands trembled for a moment. He swallowed with visible effort. A stunned silence fell over the room.

"What the—? What the fu—?" Anderson spluttered.

"Jesus," Sally said, pushing a strand of hair back out of her eyes and leaning forward to make sure she was seeing properly. "That's the Freak."

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Neither Greg nor John had ever seen an expression quite like the one on Sherlock's face. He blinked several times, then turned abruptly and set the picture down, leaning it against a wall so it was facing the room and could still be seen.

"Yes," he agreed, his voice expressionless. John's fists clenched.

" _No,_ " he said. Everyone looked at him, surprised by the intensity in his voice. "Not that word. You are _not_ that. _Never._ "

"Right," Greg said, coming to belatedly and giving himself a sharp kick for having let the shock slow his response down. "That's absolutely _right_ , Donovan. I've warned you before; this is positively the last time I'm going to say it—personal invective has no place in the mouth of any police officer, let alone one who wants to stay on my team."

Sally's cheeks flushed.

"Sorry," she muttered, though whether she was directing the apology to Sherlock or Greg was not, John thought, clear enough.

"It _is_ him, though, isn't it?" Anderson put in, quickly. "Sherlock. So what's it doing here?"

"Sherlock?" Greg looked at him. "You said it really _is_ you?" Sherlock tipped his head in acknowledgment. "I take it you knew Trevor, then?"

"Years ago, yes. At university. We didn't stay in touch. I hadn't seen him since; not,"—he glanced down at the outline of Trevor's body taped on the floor—"until today."

Greg winced. "I'm sorry," he said, though he knew what Sherlock would think of that response. "I'd never have called you in if I'd known."

"Why not?" Sherlock's voice and face were as coldly composed as Greg had ever known them. "What difference does it make?"

But Greg remembered the look on his face when he'd seen the body, and wondered why Mycroft hadn't warned him to keep Sherlock out of this one. He'd actually wanted his little brother brought into the Astor Mews case—though of course, it hadn't been murder then.

Greg looked down at the portrait again. It was an arresting likeness. Studying it more carefully, he could see that it did indeed show a much younger Sherlock, though his first impression had been that it might have been painted last week. Trevor must have been very talented, he thought; he'd managed to make his subject seem fully alive, as if he might turn and talk to you at any moment. He had painted only Sherlock's head and shoulders, but he'd made them life-sized, which added to the effect. So did the way he'd handled the lighting: it fell over the upper left quadrant of the picture and lit up the young Sherlock's face in a way that somehow made Greg think of a warm spring day, although the background was as indistinct and shadowy as a room lit only by firelight on a winter night.

But it was the expression Trevor had captured on Sherlock's face that really caught Greg by surprise. He looked, not just younger, but more relaxed, more open, and in his unguarded eyes and mouth Greg thought he could see not only the blistering intelligence but all the sensitivity and grace, warmth and humour he had always suspected lay behind the cold, alien mask Sherlock chose to present to the world. He wondered what had happened to make that promising youth into the man he knew now.

John, glancing at the portrait again, was less surprised. He'd seen his friend look that way before, though not often as fully and never for very long at a time. _He looks happy,_ he thought, and wondered how long it had lasted. Probably not very long. Certainly not long enough.

Through the fog that had begun to engulf him in the helicopter and that he'd felt himself plodding hopelessly through ever since, John was suddenly aware of a different kind of feeling: a stabbing, fierce gladness that his friend— _my best friend_ , he thought; _the best friend I've ever had—_ had known at least that much respite from the years of isolation and alienation that John had always believed must have lain behind Sherlock's willingness to resort to drug use. He was convinced that, even as a boy, Sherlock would have been far too intelligent to choose such risky and stupid behaviour for the reasons the man usually gave, boredom and the belief that the drugs could sharpen his mind. As a doctor, he felt certain that Sherlock had abused drugs for the same reasons most people did, to numb emotional pain. He'd always needed a friend. He'd rarely had one.

John didn't wonder, though, _why_ Sherlock's friendship with Victor Trevor hadn't lasted. From the way Trevor had painted the portrait, he was pretty sure he could guess.

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	10. Chapter 10

Note: My thanks to Fang's Fawn for her very helpful comments, edits, and suggestions on this chapter. As always, any remaining errors are entirely my own fault.

Reviews are always deeply appreciated and replied to.

Chapter 10:

When Greg and John looked up, Sherlock was already swirling about the bedroom with his magnifying glass in hand—crouching down suddenly to inspect some microscopic fleck on the floorboards or the dark red Turkish carpet, leaping to his feet again and stretching up to examine some equally minute mark on the newly-painted grey wall over the fireplace. It wasn't long, though, before he seemed to tire of this. Then he positioned himself at one of the windows and stood, as John had done earlier, looking out.

Greg wondered what had caught his attention. A long, wide, green lawn ran southwards for about 500 meters down a gentle slope to a couple of outbuildings, a tall fence, an equally tall hedge, and beyond those a band of trees that Greg thought must be part of the wood he had seen from the road as he drove in. It was a large one: he could make out the silver thread of a river running between the trees at the bottom of the slope, and then more trees continuing up a rise and beyond for as far as the shape of the land would let the eye see.

The property was more than twice as wide as it was deep. The security fence—a special precaution installed after Trevor had begun getting death threats—ran around it on all sides, its appearance softened by tall hedges behind it and, for much of the way down the lawn, deep perennial borders planted in front of it.

The colours in the flowerbeds seemed to blend into each other just a little, making the scene look as if it had been painted in watercolour. It was such a faint impression that Greg didn't notice it at first; when he did, he blinked to clear his vision, but the watery effect remained. He frowned and stepped forward to look more closely over Sherlock's shoulder at the long, Georgian sash window. Oh, of course—the glass was a little wavy. The window must be the original 18th-century one, handmade glass and all.

Windows like that were highly prized, he knew; people who could afford it went to great lengths to preserve them. Carolyn, his ex-wife, had argued desperately in favour of saving the ones in their old beater of a Victorian row house, even though they let in draughts and wouldn't open properly anymore and were an absolute nightmare to paint.

Greg had let her keep them since she wanted them so badly, but he'd refused to spend the small fortune it would have cost to fix the lifting mechanisms—ropes and pulleys buried in the window-frame—and one of the first things he'd done after she'd left for good had been to put in the nice, new, modern windows he thought they should have had all along. Maybe the white vinyl wouldn't suit a purist, but it looked fine to him and kept the draughts out, and when he wanted the windows open they stayed open, and when he wanted them shut, they shut—without taking his fingers off, too.

He still missed her, though, and sometimes wondered what would have happened if he'd just spent the damn money on the house and made her happy. Maybe then she wouldn't have gone looking at other men; maybe she'd have stuck with him. She'd have loved windows like this—and this view, too. It was just the kind of gracious country garden she'd always wanted, though that of course had been completely out of the question on his salary.

He liked the look of it himself: not ostentatiously large or showy, but generous enough to be truly private, even if there had been more neighbours close by than there actually were. As it was, Greg knew from the briefing he'd been given before Sherlock and John arrived that there were only a couple of old ladies living in the cottage he'd passed driving in. Their garden lay on the west side of the fence and hedge, while to the east were meadows and pastureland that belonged to The Gables but were rented out to a farmer who lived several miles farther down the winding country road.

It all made the shooting more mysterious than ever. Even if an assassin had been able to position himself outside the property, he would still have had to make a killing shot from over 500 meters away with a .45 bullet—which, unlike most ammunition, could only be used in a handgun, not a rifle. That was simply impossible—a .45 could do 200 meters at the absolute outside, Greg thought. And, at any rate, the window would have had to be open or the glass would have broken. That clearly hadn't been the case.

So why was Sherlock standing there now, looking out? Greg had no idea. Perhaps he was simply thinking about the man whose body he had just seen lying in the little wardrobe next door.

It really was the most extraordinary coincidence that Sherlock had known Trevor once! And not just been acquainted with him, but known him well enough— _Sherlock,_ who never knew anybody well—for Trevor to have painted his portrait. And not just to have painted it, but to have kept it hanging in his house for years afterwards. Even—if Sherlock had been right about this—to have tried to reach it before he died.

And didn't _that_ suggest a story?

Greg looked at the younger man curiously. He had no idea what Sherlock's romantic or sexual preferences might be. The only thing he'd ever been sure of on that subject was that Anderson was way off base in thinking that Sherlock and his current flat mate were shagging each other. Greg was absolutely positive that John Watson was straight. You only had to walk down a street or have a pint in a pub with him to see how his eyes followed every attractive woman who walked by.

The way Sherlock seemed now, it was hard for Greg to picture him in any kind of romantic relationship. But perhaps he'd been different once. . . .

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Meanwhile Sally was examining the locks on the wardrobe door. It had three of them, one above the other. The first was the original brass faceplate, which had a large keyhole meant to take a big, old-fashioned key. The second looked as if it might have been installed sometime in the middle of the last century; it could be bolted from the inside by turning a knob, and could also be opened with a key. The bedroom door was similarly equipped, but the wardrobe boasted a third locking device: a heavy slide bolt mounted on an elaborately curved flange to the bedroom side of the door.

"What do you make of this?" she asked her boss. "Bit odd, don't you think?"

"The original key probably got lost," Lestrade suggested. "They do, in old houses like this. So somebody put the others on. It was that second one that was locked, from the inside. Same with the bedroom door—it has the same kind of latch that turns from the inside with a knob. The agents had a time getting in; nobody had a key, not even the housekeeper."

"Yeah, but this bolt—why would you put that on a cupboard door? A bolt's only good for keeping people _out_."

"Or _in_ ," Anderson said, giving her a salacious look. "Maybe these blokes liked a bit of bondage. Arse-bandits get into that, don't they? Sexy women, too."

"Oh, for God's sakes, Phil," Sally hissed, turning her back on him indignantly. "Doesn't _that_ count as personal invective?" she added, with a glance at Greg.

"Watch it, Anderson," Greg said, feeling beleaguered by his squabbling team. It had been bad enough when Sally and Phil had been bonking each other on the side, but now they'd broken it off they were even harder to take. Sally couldn't stand the sight of Phil, and he couldn't seem to get the message.

Greg took a closer look at the bolt that Sally was bothered about.

"Looks like this has been here for a while," he said. "Our blokes only bought the place last year. These old houses are often all chopped up inside. Maybe there used to be a proper room there—a dressing-room or study, or a child's room, even—and the earlier owners just wanted to keep their kids from coming barging in when they were in bed."

"But it couldn't have been a proper room; there's no window, and no door to the hall," Sally was saying when Sherlock looked up—he was down on the floor again near one of the bedroom windows—and interrupted her.

"Good deduction, Lestrade—better than I would have expected. The original room's been cut in half. Didn't you notice the extra door in the hall, Sally? It'll be sealed shut. There'll be a bricked-up window, too: look from the garden when you go outside."

He dropped his head and went back to his study of the floorboards again. Greg watched him with that mix of fascination and unease he always felt when Sherlock was working on one of his cases. He'd called the consulting detective in—he knew he needed the man's help—but part of him was always waiting for the moment when Sherlock's unorthodox methods were going to fall in on them and Greg was going to be the one to pay for it.

The fact that Mycroft had asked Greg to put Sherlock on the Astor Mews case took some of the responsibility for his being here now off Greg's shoulders, but only some. In spite of the older Holmes' shadowy power in all things to do with national security, Greg knew that if his Commissioner wasn't satisfied with the results of this investigation he would find a way to make Trevor's murder somehow Greg's fault.

He could hear the man roaring at him now: "Pictures badly hung? Rusty staples? You're supposed to be a _Scotland Yard detective,_ Lestrade, not a _decorator!_ You're telling me the Minister in charge of the Olympics, who was getting regular death-threats, has been found murdered in his house in the country that the Met has been guarding for two months, and you think there's _no connection_ between this and the break-in we were investigating yesterday at his equally well-locked and guarded city house? When do you think I was born, Lestrade—yesterday? I want _hard proof_ that Lance invented that break-in and we're not dealing with a terrorist or a turncoat. You were supposed to find out what was going on _before_ this happened; after is _too bloody late!_ "

And he would have a point. Sherlock had backed up what Greg's own instincts had been telling him, that the agents had done their job at the Mews and there had been no security breach, no break-in, but Greg was still having a hard time believing it. It seemed incredible that the similarity between the two events—or, if Sherlock was right, between one non-event and Victor Trevor's murder—was just a coincidence.

But perhaps it wasn't one. The obvious answer was that Trevor's partner— _husband,_ Greg reminded himself—Lance was the villain in both cases. It usually was the spouse in a murder case, and Lance could have had any number of motives, including his money problems ( _must find out what Trevor's will looks like,_ Greg noted to himself) and his attempt at insurance fraud. If Trevor was really the man of integrity that Sherlock seemed to think, and Trevor had found out what Lance had been up to and threatened to turn him in, Lance might very well have been tempted to murder him.

Trevor had told the agents that he and Lance had never had a key to the old locks on the bedroom or wardrobe doors, but he could have been mistaken. Maybe Lance had had one all along. Or maybe he'd had one made. They should check with the local locksmiths. Lance might not have hired locally, of course; he could have brought a locksmith down from London—in which case he must have been planning this for some time. Well, perhaps he had been. Or perhaps he'd wanted a key for some other reason.

Maybe Anderson was right, Greg thought. He knew the forensics specialist had just been joking around, trying to get a rise out of Sally, but maybe the men _were_ into BDSM. Greg had worked cases like that. He couldn't fathom it himself, but some people did get off on letting their partners tie them up or lock them away in uncomfortable places.

Stupid, really—it was just asking for trouble. But if Trevor and Lance liked that sort of thing, Lance might have had a key made as a present for his lover, a way of saying "lock me up," or "let me lock you up." The key would probably work in both doors, the bedroom and the wardrobe—the locks in old houses were like that.

But the bedroom was a spacious and comfortable one with a fireplace and plenty of natural light; it had nothing in common with the home-made dungeons Greg had twice had to remove bodies from. The wardrobe could have been made into that sort of space, perhaps—but it could already be locked from the outside; no key would have been required. And if the men had used that windowless little room for their sex games, surely they wouldn't have turned around and had it transformed into a civilized and elegant walk-in wardrobe instead?

Greg made a mental note to check the armoires and chests of drawers—there were two of each in the bedroom, and presumably others in the house—for bondage paraphernalia, but he was unconvinced by this theory and didn't expect to find anything.

A grunt from Sherlock got his attention then. The detective was lying on his stomach with his head under the desk, which had been placed along a stretch of wall between the two windows. He grunted again with what sounded like satisfaction and pushed himself out from the kneehole of the desk, springing to his feet with his usual athletic grace. He seemed to be holding something in his hand.

"What's that?" Greg asked.

"What I was expecting."

"Don't play games with me, Sherlock."

The consulting detective smiled sardonically.

"I don't play _games,_ " he said, and opened his gloved hand to show a few splinters of wood.

Greg took them and looked at them carefully, but finally shook his head.

"What are they from?"

"You don't know?"

"Wouldn't ask if I did."

"How do you suppose Victor was shot?"

"Well, that's the whole question, isn't it?" _You great berk,_ Greg added in his head but not out loud.

Sherlock closed his eyes and sighed dramatically.

"Let me rephrase that. _Where_ do you suppose he was shot? In that wardrobe?"

"Well—no. Here's more likely—or just inside the wardrobe, maybe, but since he hadn't moved his clothes in yet he'd have had no reason to be there that I can think of, so this room makes more sense. We haven't found any traces of blood out here, but the bleeding was slow and mostly internal, John said; it wouldn't have splattered around. If he was shot here, just outside the wardrobe, he might have stumbled inside and locked it before collapsing. Those blood stains in there do look as if he fell just inside the door and then dragged himself along, like you said."

Greg watched Sherlock intently, wondering how the man actually felt about the fact that the thing Trevor had apparently been trying with such painful, dying effort to reach had been Sherlock's own portrait. Jesus, Greg thought, that _has_ to be getting to him. But the detective's face seemed as emotionless as ever.

"Of course," Sherlock agreed. "He would have staggered into the wardrobe and locked it to secure himself against his attacker. It was a fatal mistake—his phone was on the desk out here; after he collapsed in there he had no way to call for help—but in the shock of the attack he would not have thought of that until it was too late."

"Hardly a mistake. With the murderer right there it was his only chance of escape, surely."

"You don't really imagine the murderer was _right there_ , do you, Lestrade?"

"Well, not _right_ there—he must have been in the hall, or the room across the hall from this one. Trevor must have shut the bedroom door and locked it after he was shot, then taken refuge in the wardrobe and locked that, too. It's the only way it could have happened. But who did it, and how did they get into the house? This place was supposed to be as safe as Buckingham Palace—if not safer. It's either Lance or one of the agents—and if it _is_ Lance, he must have paid off one of the agents to lie for him, because from what they've told me he hasn't been in this house since he left yesterday morning to drive in to London."

Sherlock leaned back against the wall and steepled his fingers under his chin.

"Then how," he said, very softly, "do you account for those splinters in your hand?"

Greg looked back down at them doubtfully.

"Bit of firewood, maybe—fell off one of those logs in that basket by the hearth."

"How did they get under the desk, then?"

"Got stuck on the sole of a slipper; came off while Trevor or Lance was working at the desk."

Sherlock leapt away from the wall and twirled to face Lestrade again.

"Not bad," he conceded, "but incorrect. John, do those splinters Lestrade is holding appear to you to come from a piece of firewood?"

There was no answer.

" _John?"_ Sherlock glanced impatiently around the room, clearly surprised when he didn't see his flat mate watching him with admiration. Frowning, he crossed the room in two strides and disappeared down the hall.

"Where's Dr. Watson, Donovan?" Greg called out, and then, when nobody answered, " _Donovan?_ Anderson, where's Donovan got to? And where's John?"

Anderson looked up from what he was doing and shrugged.

"Shagging?" he suggested. "She likes that. Maybe he does, too."

"For God's sake, Phil!" Greg usually tried to preserve professional formalities with his team when they were on a job, but when pushed past his limit would sometimes slip into the Christian names he used when they were all unwinding at the pub. " _Drop it!_ You're going to land yourself with a sexual harassment suit if you keep this up, and I don't want to be party to it. What's got into you, anyway?"

"She's dropped _me_ ," Phil said, dolefully. It was an admission he would never have made if Sherlock had been in the room. Then his face brightened. "If Watson's bonking Sally, maybe he's going to drop _him,_ too. Doesn't seem as keen as usual to be tagging along after His Geniusness, does he?"

"I said _drop it, Anderson!_ " Greg snapped, and left the room in search of his missing team member, consulting detective, and friend. Anderson, realizing belatedly that he'd really put his foot in it, quickly finished what he was doing and followed.

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When Sherlock had deduced the missing window and door in the wardrobe, Sally Donovan had said nothing, but as soon as she could slip out of the room unobserved she walked down the hall and tested a door halfway between the master bedroom and another large room that she could see through another open door farther down the hall.

Just as _he_ had predicted, the middle door didn't open. Damn it, why hadn't she noticed it there when she'd come in? But then again, why would she? And _why would he?_ He really was a fr—she bit the word off. She was going to have to be careful; she didn't want to lose her place on Lestrade's team by letting that word slip out again, even if it did fit Sherlock Bloody Holmes like a glove.

She took a moment to walk around the corner into the other room, which proved to be a spacious if not particularly up-to-date bathroom with a toilet in its own stall, two sinks, a walk-in shower, and a claw-foot tub. Judging by the standards of the rest of the house, it was probably the next thing Lance and Trevor had been planning to renovate.

On her right was a door equipped with two locks and a bolt, like the one in the bedroom down the hall. She pushed it open. Behind it lay another small, windowless space like the wardrobe where the body had been found: the other half of the original room.

It was empty except for a few shelves that looked as if they'd been put in by a not-very-skilled DIYer. An outline of a door was traced on the inside wall here, too. A ragged hole in the drywall showed bricks underneath, suggesting that someone had tried to open up the wall from this side and found it more difficult than they had expected to break through.

Sally had no idea what made her reach out and touch the bricks. They felt rough and raw; the mortar had been slapped on hastily, with no attempt at a smooth finish. Why would anyone have used _brick_ to wall off an already small room into two tiny ones? Drywall was so much easier to work with, not to mention less weight for the old floorboards to support.

And if they'd wanted cupboard space, why not make the whole room a dressing room with an easy walk-through from the master bedroom to the bathroom? As it was, anyone sleeping in the main bedroom would have to run down the hall to go to the loo or have a wash. Presumably that was what the as-yet-uncut door was meant to remedy, but Sally couldn't imagine why anyone would build a brick wall between a master bedroom and the master bath. It wasn't as if they'd needed privacy: there was another, smaller bathroom on the other side of the hall, which was presumably what any guests or children would use.

And then there were those bolts. They still seemed all wrong to her. Maybe they'd preceded the dividing-up of the old room, as Lestrade had suggested. But if they hadn't . . . ?

She shivered. There was something about these cramped, windowless, bricked-up and bolted spaces that made her skin crawl.

"John?" Sherlock's voice said behind her, making her jump. She backed out of the cupboard and had the satisfaction of seeing a flash of chagrin cross the detective's face when he saw her. _See? Even geniuses make mistakes, Freak,_ she thought, then hoped she hadn't said that out loud when she saw her boss walking into the room.

"There you are, Donovan," Greg said. "Why'd you come in here?"

"I was just checking out this cupboard. It backs onto the wardrobe where Trevor was found. There's something not quite right about it—look at that wall."

"Brick? That's strange. Wonder when that was done?"

"Late eighties," Sherlock said automatically but absently, as if he wasn't really thinking about what he was saying. "That shade of fletton facing brick was common then but hasn't been readily available since. The bolts are the same vintage; that particular curved flange hasn't been made since 1989."

" _Freak,"_ Anderson—who had followed the D.I. into the room—mouthed at Sally behind Greg's back. She looked away pointedly.

"I don't suppose it really matters, then," she said, ignoring the prickle down her arms and the back of her neck that was trying to insist that it did. "We should be getting on with the interviews."

"My thoughts exactly," Lestrade said. "Thought you might want to be there for that, Donovan, but you'd disappeared."

Sally flushed again. Bugger it, she'd slipped up again. And it wasn't even her fault. If Sherlock wasn't such a freak with his deductions, she would never have come in here at all; then she wouldn't be feeling so unsettled and on edge, and she wouldn't have gotten on the wrong side of her boss for the second time that day.

She turned to glare at the consulting detective. But he had already left the room in search of his missing blogger.

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	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11:

Sherlock found John walking back and forth in the driveway outside the front door. It was starting to rain again. The doctor looked up when he heard his name and turned back towards the house at once.

"Sorry," he said, sounding embarrassed. "Wanted some air. Tell that bloody brother of yours, 'No more helicopters,' okay?"

Sherlock studied his friend's face intently. It looked a more natural colour now than it had earlier, which meant either that the grey paint Trevor and Lance had chosen for their walls really was unflattering to the human complexion or the fresh air had done John good.

"You should just walk away when he does that," he pointed out. "That's what I do."

"I don't have your detailed knowledge of back alleys, roof tops, and other CCTV-free escape routes."

"We'll have to work on that," Mycroft's brother said, seriously.

John's eyes met his with a gleam of amusement in them, the first his friend had seen there all day. Something shifted then in Sherlock's mind, the darkness and heaviness he had been conscious of as an almost physical weight pressing down on him ever since he had walked into the house giving way to an unexpected sense of something lighter.

"Come on," he said. "We don't want to miss anything. Lestrade's going to interview the suspects; it's always entertaining to see what he doesn't think to ask."

John shot Sherlock a look, then took another deep breath of the blessedly cool, moist air, nodded, and strode resolutely back into the house behind his friend.

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Because of the urgency of the investigation, Lestrade had decided to override regular procedure and conduct his interviews of the staff at the house. He started with the housekeeper, Muriel Briden, a fifty-something local woman who came in to clean and sometimes cook for the two men.

This was one of the mornings when she had been expecting to cook. She had arrived at the house at her usual time, 6:00 a.m., and had in fact been the one to raise the alarm when Trevor did not appear for breakfast by 6:30. Lestrade found her sitting in the kitchen, weeping quietly, but she wiped her face when he came in and offered to make tea and coffee, which he gladly accepted. When Sherlock and John came in the police team was sitting around the long harvest table in front of a bank of French doors overlooking the garden, Greg asking the housekeeper questions while Sally recorded the whole exchange.

Muriel Briden had been working for Trevor and Lance since they had bought The Gables a year ago. She had cleaned for the previous owners, a family called McPherson, before that, and been passed on by recommendation. She said she had been glad to keep the job; it was conveniently close to her home in St. Mary's Wold, and the men had paid her well and been considerate in their personal habits and demands on her time.

They seemed to have been very considerate indeed: the renovations had resulted in a great deal of extra dust and inconvenience, but as the men had stayed in their London house throughout the worst of it—the work on the kitchen—she had not had to cope with that. Trevor had, in fact, insisted on paying her regular wage throughout that time, even though they had not needed her—a gesture that had clearly earned her undying gratitude.

"Really, you know, he didn't _have_ to do that," she said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue from the box Greg had made sure was on the table. "The McPhersons would never have thought of it. I even argued with him about it, but he wouldn't hear of anything else."

"This was Trevor," Greg asked, "not Lance?"

"Mr. Gabriel? No, not him! It was Mr. Victor, of course. It would never be Mr. Gabriel. I—well, perhaps I shouldn't say that." She dropped her eyes from Greg's and crumpled the tissue in her hands.

"Please say whatever you're thinking, Mrs. Briden. We need to understand as much as possible about what Victor Trevor's life was like if we're to find out what happened here this morning."

"Well . . . I . . ." She shook her head and stopped again, her eyes still on the tissue she was now twisting to bits in her hands.

"You didn't like Gabriel Lance," Sherlock broke in, earning himself a glare from Sally Donovan and a reproving " _Sherlock!"_ from Greg. But the statement, leading though it might be, seemed to be exactly what the housekeeper needed someone to say. She looked up, relief washing across her face.

"That's right," she said. "How did you know?"

"I've met him. And I knew Victor quite well once."

In spite of the evidence of the portrait, that admission brought a little gasp from Sally. Even Greg startled; Phil Anderson sneered.

The housekeeper looked at Sherlock curiously, and John was surprised to see the lines of his friend's face soften a little as some unspoken communication seemed to pass between them.

 _But of course,_ he thought. _They both liked Trevor, and neither of them thought this man Lance was good for him. He can't have been, if he was shallow and materialistic enough to get them heavily into debt, as Sherlock thinks, and then dishonest enough to pull that stunt with the pictures, trying to get out of it. I wonder if Trevor knew?_

 _Probably not, if he was as honest as he sounds. Sherlock seemed to know a good deal about those pictures. They must have belonged to Trevor when he knew him. If Trevor liked them—and he must have done, if he had them hanging in his house—that was a rotten thing for his lover—husband, whatever—to do, pretending they'd been stolen. No wonder Sherlock didn't like him. He'd have taken one glance around that house and known what was happening. . . ._

And for a moment he wished that he'd gone to Astor Mews with Sherlock the day before and met Gabriel Lance, instead of haring down to Lewisham with Major Amberley. Perhaps he'd have more insight into the current situation if he had. But of course he couldn't have put the old man off. He'd have to remind Greg about his promise to look into that theft, once this case was over.

"Why don't you like Gabriel Lance?" Greg was asking the housekeeper now.

"No good reason," she said. "That's why it seems wrong to say. I just—oh, he's all right, really. I don't hate him or anything; I'm just not as fond of him as I am—as I _was_ —of Mr. Victor. They're so different. Mr. Gabriel is very keen on how everything looks, you know. All those fancy clothes of his! And the _jewellery!_ Great heavy cufflinks and chains and things."

"Chains, eh?" Anderson whispered, giving Sally a nudge. "What did I say?"

" _Anderson!"_ Greg snapped.

"Oh, yes," Mrs. Briden said. "Gold ones, round his neck or on his wrist. And a diamond in his ear sometimes. I don't know, I'm a bit old-fashioned, maybe, but I don't like to see a man all dolled up like that, even if he is a—" She broke off, flushing with embarrassment at what she'd been about to say.

"He thinks such a lot of himself," she went on, hastily, "that's what puts me off. Mr. Victor wasn't like that at all. A real gentleman, he was. Must have had a nice mother, —and a nice father, too, I'm sure. I used to think it was a shame he hadn't found himself a good woman; he ought to have had children; he'd have been a wonderful father. Or, if he _had_ to have a man, then a different kind of man—one cut out more along his lines."

"What kind of lines were those, Mrs. Briden?" Greg asked.

"Oh, he was a very special man, Mr. Victor. So generous and kind, as I've told you, and so honest; I'd have trusted him with my life, I really would. And talk about intelligent—my word! He seemed to know everything there was to know. I didn't think Gabriel Lance was good enough for him, that's what it boils down to. I always thought he was too shallow and too self-centered for a man like Mr. Victor, though I guess he did know a lot about art. That was an interest they had in common."

"How did Trevor seem to feel about Lance?" Greg asked, curious. They might have been married, but that didn't guarantee either man's feelings about the other, as the number of murders committed by domestic partners showed.

"Oh, he thought the world of Mr. Gabriel, poor man. Anything he wanted done to the house, Mr. Victor always told him just to do it. This kitchen, now—this was all Mr. Gabriel's idea. Mr. Victor would have been happy enough with the old one, I'm sure. Such a production it was, too, putting this in! They had to get special permission—the house is listed, you know—and it cost an arm and a leg. That fridge there, and the dishwasher—they're German, they cost the earth—and then these worktops! But I will say, Mr. Gabriel does use it. He's a fine cook, always making something special. I haven't had to do a lot that way, just these past few weeks since he's been away."

"Lance has been away?" The Detective Inspector sounded surprised.

"Oh, I thought you'd know! Yes, he was staying up in London, in their house there. Well, he was until two nights ago."

"Lance came here two nights ago?"

"That's right. Got here day before yesterday, just as I was leaving—but that was the first I'd seen of him in ever so long."

"Do you have any idea why?"

"Well, he _said_ he'd been busy with evening engagements up in the city—art shows and such; he has a gallery, you know."

"You didn't believe him?"

"Well. . . ."

"Please, Mrs. Briden. All your thoughts, remember, whether they seem relevant or not."

"It's just—Well, Mr. Victor's the busy one, isn't he? _Was_ the busy one," she corrected, trying to wipe her eyes with the tissue in her hand and finding there wasn't enough left to do anything with.

Greg pushed the box toward her and she took another, wiped her eyes with it, then blew her nose decisively.

"Very busy he was, what with being a Cabinet Minister and all," she went on at last. "They used to come down here just for the weekend—Friday night to Monday morning, regular as clockwork. Then suddenly Mr. Gabriel was staying up in London and Mr. Victor was down here all the time, having to get up before dawn so he can exercise and wash and dress and have a bit of breakfast, and then drive to the station to take the train in to London, and then a taxi from the station there to his office! Crazy, that's what I call it. I told him so one day, and he said he liked this house best and Mr. Gabriel was welcome to the other if he wanted it. Which made me think—well, you know."

"That they were splitting up?"

"Well, yes, it did seem like that. I was relieved Mr. Trevor was planning to keep the house—it's a special place, so private here by the nature reserve, and I knew they'd had offers for it, lots of them, and Mr. Gabriel thought they should sell. But then there was Mr. Gabriel coming down day before yesterday, about five, just cool as you please, with a car full of groceries—things from Harrod's and Fortnum's and places like that—and saying he was done work for a while and so glad to be home again— _home,_ that's what he called it, which really surprised me—and I didn't need to stay and cook dinner as he was going to do it. And I didn't know whether to be sorry or glad, because Mr. Victor had been so quiet and sad the past few weeks, and even if I didn't think Mr. Gabriel was good enough for him, I knew his coming back was going to make Mr. Victor happy. And that seemed like it could only be a good thing, you know?"

"Of course," Lestrade said, although it was Sherlock she directed her remark to. He had been watching her intently, fingers steepled under his chin; now he nodded briefly.

"But . . .?" he said.

 _Of course,_ John thought. _Of course there's a 'but.'_

He glanced down the honey-coloured pine table to the opposite wall, where the huge red Aga was glowing cheerfully. It was the traditional kind, always on. He could feel its warmth from where he was sitting; it had been seeping into him while he'd been sitting there, like the heat from the mug his hands were wrapped around, gradually banishing the chill that he'd actively sought outside.

"Heart of the home," a kitchen was supposed to be. Lance had brought groceries and said he was glad to be home again.

"But. . . ." There was always a "but" about coming home.

"But then he left again the next morning. I'm not usually in every day, but I came in yesterday because I wanted to finish cleaning the silver. Mr. Victor has— _had—_ quite a collection of it, all antique—candlesticks and serving dishes and tea sets and old sports trophies, ever so many of them, as well as all the cutlery, of course. They're all over the house; it's a big job to get everything clean. Once I've started I like to keep going until it's done."

 _And you wanted to see how things were going with Trevor and Lance,_ John thought, glancing at Sherlock. But the detective's face gave nothing away.

"And Lance had already left?" Greg asked. "Or did he leave after you got there?"

"He'd already gone. They both had. And—" She hesitated, her already ruddy cheeks deepening several shades.

"And?" Greg prompted.

"Oh"—she started picking at the tissues in her lap again—"nothing, really. Just that I'd thought they'd both still be here, but they weren't."

"You were going to say," Sherlock suggested, his voice dark and silken, "that when you went upstairs to clean you found that one of the guest-room beds had been slept in, and you could tell that Trevor had slept alone."

"Well—yes." Mrs. Briden looked startled. "But how on earth did you know that?"

"That's Sherlock," Greg said, staring at Sally and Phil to remind them to keep their mouths shut.

"Because he's a fr—" Anderson started, having entirely missed his D.I.'s look.

Sally hissed "Shut _up,_ you moron" just in time to save him from finishing the word, making Greg wonder why she'd bothered, while John flexed his hands and thought how satisfying it would be to clock Phil Anderson on the nose.

"Your flushed face said you were embarrassed," Sherlock said. "Given all the indications that the men had quarreled earlier, and the fact that Lance had returned only the night before—clearly expecting to stay—but then left, the deduction was obvious."

 _He likes her,_ John thought, _or he wouldn't have explained that so gently._

Muriel Briden looked at Sherlock with admiration.

"You _are_ clever, aren't you?" she said. "Yes, that's right. When I went to make up the main bed—well, it was obvious that only one person had been sleeping in it. I knew it must have been Mr. Victor, because he always sleeps on the right side, even when he's alone, but if it's Mr. Gabriel here by himself—and it has been, a few times, when Mr. Victor had to work all night in London—he sleeps on the left."

"And the guest room bed had been slept in?" Greg asked.

"Yes, that's right. They often bring guests home at short notice, so I keep all the beds made up. I went into the north-east room later to get the silver and saw right away that the bed there had been slept in. I didn't know what to do— whether I should take the sheets off and wash them or whether he was going to want them another night."

"You don't have any idea what the problem was?" Trevor had spent the night before his murder at The Gables; there was a good chance, Greg thought, that Mrs. Briden had extended her silver-cleaning into the evening so as to be there when he got back from London.

The housekeeper tipped her head thoughtfully.

"Well," she said, after a moment, "I don't know for certain. But I did think they must have quarreled about that picture again."

"What picture?" Greg asked.

" _Again?"_ Anderson exclaimed. "How would _you_ know what they'd quarreled about the first time?"

Sherlock fixed him with his coldest narrow-eyed stare, the one that always made Anderson feel as if he'd been fixed on a slide and was being looked at under a microscope. He tried not to squirm.

"Do you really not know, Anderson," Sherlock inquired, acidly, "that it is virtually impossible to keep anything from an intelligent housekeeper who cleans your rooms?"

"Mr. Victor drove down here alone the night after one of their big parties," Mrs. Briden said, sniffling again and reaching for another tissue. "But Mr. Gabriel stayed in London that night and every night after until two nights ago. When he came down after the party, Mr. Victor had that picture with him; it's been sitting on the mantel in his room there ever since. I'd never seen it before. I was sure that must have been what they'd argued about, or why would Mr. Victor have brought it away with him? He never did that normally; it was always Mr. Gabriel who was changing the paintings about."

" _What picture?"_ Greg asked again. Muriel Briden looked at him as if he had two heads. Sherlock closed his eyes and re-steepled his hands under his chin.

"Why, the one Mr. Victor brought down with him, of course! I thought when I first saw it that it was Mr. Gabriel, but then I looked more closely and saw it couldn't be him. And then when you came in,"—looking at Sherlock—"Well. It _is_ you, isn't it, Mr. Holmes?"

Eyes still closed, Sherlock inclined his head in the briefest of nods.

"I thought so! I thought so, even before you said you'd known him. It's a small world, isn't it? I've often wondered what Mr. Victor was like when he was younger. I'm sure he was a fine man even then. He was, wasn't he, dear?" That last word seemed to slip out almost unconsciously.

"Yes," Sherlock said, quietly. "Yes, he was."

The look on Anderson's and Sally's faces would have been worth filming, Greg thought later, if only the one that passed briefly over Sherlock's—so briefly, Greg almost missed it—hadn't been, like the one he had caught there when Sherlock first saw Trevor's body, so much like pain.

000000

"So, what do you think?" Greg asked, after telling Mrs. Briden she could go home. "Any idea yet how our murderer got through two locked doors, when both of them were locked from the inside and nobody seems to have had a key? Windows all shut tight, no footprints or ladder marks in the wet grass or flower beds outside, no indication that anyone could have gotten up on the roof, security cameras and armed guards everywhere. . . . It's the classic locked-room mystery and then some—like a bloody Agatha Christie, damn it all to hell!"

Sherlock flicked his eyes in Greg's direction.

"You don't find it obvious?"

"I would, if Lance had been here. He'd have a key to the rooms, if anybody did, and he's got motives all over the place: the quarrel with Trevor"—Greg studiously kept his eyes off Sherlock's face—"and then the possibility that Trevor had found out about that attempt at insurance scam and threatened to expose him. _And_ we don't know where he was last night: he left Astor Mews just after 7:30, with two suitcases and his car, and he hasn't been seen since. I've been trying to reach him but he isn't answering his mobile or responding to texts."

"That sounds suspicious," John said.

"Yeah, it's suspicious as hell, but you thought Trevor was shot between 4:30 and 5:30, the housekeeper was here by 6:00, and the agents say Lance hasn't entered this place since he left it yesterday morning. We'll double-check all the video, of course, but the whole property is securely fenced and guarded, and he never came in by the driveway and the front gate. There's a back gate, off the woods—I suppose he _could_ have come in that way—he'd know the keycode—but the agents were patrolling the perimeter all night long; they're sure they'd have seen him. And anyone who came in through the back gate would set off alarms as they approached the house. I'm told they can only be deactivated from the central server."

"Where's that kept?" John asked.

"Not sure. I haven't had a chance to do a proper walk-around yet. We only got here twenty minutes before you did; I was held up trying to track Lance down to break the news. I want to interview the agents now—I've talked to Morton, the head of security here, but not the other two. And then there's the neighbours in that cottage next door; they might have seen or heard something. And the carpenters who've been building that wardrobe—I'd like to know how long they've been working on the house and whether they're really what they're supposed to be."

"You think one of them could have done it?"

"Could be. Sherlock's brother's been on the phone to me already to remind me of the political and security implications of this for the Olympics. An assassin working for a foreign power or a terrorist organization could have disguised himself as a workman, especially if this had been planned for a while. Though the Powers That Be are still worried it's one of our men."

John raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah," Greg said. "It's bad. If it's one of our guys, we're in deep shit. We're in deep enough as it is, since we've let this happen on our watch. _My_ watch," he added, grimly. "The Commissioner was expecting me to find the security hole _before_ something like this happened. Of course," and his voice brightened a little, "they don't know what Sherlock's worked out about Astor Mews yet. If nobody got into the house at all, then there's no reason to think the agents weren't all doing their jobs."

John nodded. Greg sighed.

"But they might not care too much about that," he went on, his voice darkening again. "If they're looking for heads to roll, mine's right on the line."

"Not if you find out who did it, surely?" John said. Greg shrugged.

"We'll see. I'm going to grill these agents, that's for sure, and anyone else I can think of. You want to listen in, Sherlock? I'd be glad if you did. If there's anything there to pick up on, you'll be the one to see it."

Sherlock nodded curtly.

He was certain he already knew _how_ the murder had been done—so certain that he hadn't yet bothered to take a walk outside and find the final piece of evidence that would confirm it beyond all doubt. But _who_ and the full details of _why_ were still unanswered questions that concerned him for more pressing reasons than Lestrade's job security, important though that was to his ability to go on getting really interesting cases from the police.

He had always accepted the fact that being a consulting detective involved considerable risk. Still, he had no desire to die any sooner than was absolutely necessary—but if that was to be avoided now, he was going to have to find out who had shot Victor Trevor before they succeeded in shooting _him._

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Note:

If you're enjoying this story at all, I'd really appreciate your taking a moment to let me know. It's great to be favourited or followed, but a written review, even a short one, makes all the difference in the world.

I don't mind constructive criticism, so if your feelings about the story are mixed, please don't let that stop you from telling me what you think. It's been all planned out in detail from the start (yes, all the pieces really will fit together!) and many parts of the remaining chapters are already written, so short of my being hit by a bus it _will_ be finished. It's taking much more time and effort to write than I had expected, though, and pretty much consumes all my leisure time and then some, so it would be very helpful to know that people are enjoying it - or, if you're not, why not.

My thanks to Fang's Fawn for her edits and suggestions on these last two chapters, and indeed throughout this story. Any mischaracterizations or errors that remain are entirely my own fault.


	12. Chapter 12

Note: I'm sorry to have been so long about getting this chapter up. I thought I could knock it off in a week, but it turned out to be unexpectedly difficult to write. In fact, it probably wouldn't be up now if it hadn't been for Fang's Fawn's generosity with her time in giving feedback and editorial suggestions; I'm most grateful to her for that.

People who are sensitive to mentions of sexual abuse should be warned that there is some discussion of it here, though only in a theoretical way and prompted by what _didn't_ happen to some minor original characters in the past.

Chapter 12:

The head agent—a long-boned, lantern-jawed Scot named McBride—entered the kitchen with set lips and a determined stride. It was obvious even before he spoke that he knew he and his team were under suspicion and he was angry about it.

Sherlock studied him for a few moments, then turned away and stared out the window while Lestrade questioned the man, registering his disinterest by restless foot-and-finger-tapping. He did the same thing for each of the interviews that followed, finally getting out of his seat and pacing around the kitchen, opening the fridge and cupboards and peering into them. John watched him curiously; Sally, with rising anger. Greg did his best to ignore the consulting detective's behaviour and focus on the men—and, in one case, woman—he was talking to.

There were six agents who had been on duty at some point during the night or early morning preceding the murder. As the interviews wore on, everyone's tension level seemed stretched to breaking, but Greg could find nothing to suggest that any of the agents had been a security risk. They had all been thoroughly vetted before joining SO1 and again before being given this assignment; their stories all squared with each other and with the information on the relevant security tapes that Greg reviewed before each interview.

He could find no indication that anyone had been lax in performing his or her duties or had varied in any way from the established procedures, which had been designed by some of the world's top security experts. By noon, Greg had no more idea who could have killed Victor Trevor or how they could have got into the grounds of The Gables to do it than he'd had when he arrived.

He was just finishing the last of the interviews when McBride put his head around the kitchen door and grunted, "Carpenters have shown up. What to do you want me to do with them?"

"Carpenters?" For a moment Greg was puzzled. Then he remembered the unfinished walk-in wardrobe upstairs: of course, the carpenters would be returning to work on it. They would have no idea that the owner of the house had been found dead that morning; the Met, in consultation with MI5 and Downing Street, had not yet released the news.

At least, the workmen would have no idea Trevor had been killed if they'd had nothing to do with it. Greg hadn't forgotten the possibility he'd voiced to John and Sherlock earlier that morning, that work on the house could have provided the perfect cover for an assassin bent on disrupting the coming Olympics.

"Show them in," he said.

McBride jerked his chin in acknowledgment. A moment later the three workmen entered and turned out not to be men at all. One was a forty-something woman, ruddy-faced and heavy-set, with greying blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. The other women were younger. One—tall, slim, and dark haired—was probably in her late twenties; the other—petite, blonde, and very pretty—looked as though she was barely out of school.

"What's going on?" the older woman asked, bluntly.

Sherlock stopped his peregrination around the kitchen and looked the newcomers over while Greg explained. John, watching both of them, thought that nothing in the women's reactions to the news was striking either detective as unusual. It certainly seemed natural enough to him: they appeared shocked, but not excessively so. It would, he thought, have been suspicious if they had been more surprised—you'd have to be an idiot not to realize that being shown into a roomful of police meant something dramatic must have happened.

"How long have you been in business?" Greg asked, after telling the women to sit down and explaining what had happened. The question drew looks of surprise from all of them.

"Me, or my company?" Susan—the older woman—asked. "I've been in the trade nine years. I started out on my own two years ago. Claire—" (indicating the dark-haired, younger woman) "has been with me from the start. Alice is working on a carpentry program at the Colchester Institute and just began her apprenticeship with us last month."

"What—" Greg started, but whatever he wanted to ask got cut off by Sherlock, who put both hands down on the table, leaned forward, and—his deep baritone voice turning all eyes in his direction—demanded, "Why are you so late today?"

"For God's sake, Sherlock," Greg protested, but Sherlock ignored him.

"Why—are—you—so—late?" he repeated, with deliberate emphasis.

The two older women glanced at each other uncomfortably. The little blonde apprentice giggled.

"Something came up," Susan said, tossing her head a little as if she had forgotten her hair was pulled back and she wanted to clear it out of her face. "So we were unavoidably delayed."

The apprentice—Alice—who had been trying to straighten her expression out into something more serious, made a noise somewhere between a sneeze and a snort, and clapped her hand hastily over her mouth in a vain attempt to suppress it.

"What's so amusing?" Sherlock asked, looking at her intensely. Her eyes widened a little as she took in the full blaze of his. She stopped laughing at once.

"Oh—nothing, really." One slim hand moved to grip the other. John had the impression that she would have liked to look away but couldn't make herself take her eyes off Sherlock's face. The tip of her tongue slipped out of her mouth and she moistened her lips nervously.

 _She's already fascinated by him,_ the doctor thought. _And he knows it, too, the great berk._

He did. A smile spread over his face and his voice deepened in exactly the way it always did when he wanted to get Molly Hooper to do something for him.

"Oh, come now, Alice," he said, smoothly, "you can tell me, can't you?"

There was no resisting that voice or that smile. She smiled back, her heart-shaped face crinkling up attractively.

"It's just that what happened was so funny! And they had it coming to them; they really did!"

Susan cleared her throat. Alice ignored her.

"What was that?" Sherlock asked, ignoring Susan too. "And why did they have it coming to them?"

"Oh, just—most people don't work on Sundays, do they? But these two, when they booked us, they _insisted_ we had to get it done as fast as possible, even if that meant working right through the weekend. So what happened pretty much served them right, didn't it?"

" _What. Happened?"_

John noted wryly that Sherlock had already forgotten about charming Alice and was letting his frustration with her oblique approach to story-telling show. Her eyes widened with alarm, and she licked her lips nervously again.

"Oh, it was nothing— _nothing,_ really!" She looked anxiously at her boss, whose own lips were now set in a fine, thin line. "You explain, Susan," she pleaded. "You'll do it better."

Susan rolled her eyes.

"Anybody would," she muttered, but she cleared her throat again and began to explain, addressing herself to Greg Lestrade.

"In the first place," she said, "it was Gabriel Lance who spoke to me about the job, not both men—not the Minister, Mr. Trevor."

" _Lance?_ " Greg said, sharply. It shouldn't be Lance, he was thinking, if he'd really quarreled with Trevor weeks ago and moved out, as Mrs. Briden had said. "Are you sure it was Lance?"

"Yes, quite sure."

"How long ago was that?"

"Oh, a couple of months back, at least. We've only been in business two years, but we've got a good reputation around here; there's never any shortage of work."

"Oh, I see," Greg said, relaxing. Of course. A good firm would need to be booked well in advance. Lance must have made the arrangements before his split with Trevor.

"Working through the weekend was the only way to fit the job in; we were already booked for another starting next week, and pretty much right through the summer after that. And I know you don't like getting up early on Saturday and Sunday, Alice"—directing a reproving look at her apprentice—"but if you're going to make a living in this business, you're going to have to get used to it. Not that I'd always take a job on the weekend," she added, looking back at Greg, "but I didn't want to pass this one up."

"It was a big job, then?" Greg asked.

"Yeah, I'm sure a walk-in wardrobe's a _really_ big deal," Anderson muttered to Sally, behind his hand. "But maybe, with all those chains needing to be taken out . . .?"

Sally glared at him and gestured pointedly at the device she was using to record the interviews.

"Oops!" Phil said, tweaking her elbow in a gesture that John, who was sitting across from him and had heard the whole exchange, guessed was meant to be as much flirtatious as apologetic. Even in his current dark mood it amused him to see Sally dig the offended elbow sharply into Anderson's side, getting a startled "Oof!" of pain from him, then hitch her chair several inches farther away.

"Not a particularly big job," John could hear Susan saying to Greg while this was going on. "But if I'm going to take this business to the next level, I need good recommendations. I've already got some, but a Cabinet Minister—well, I thought that would do us a lot of good. Worth giving up a weekend for, anyway."

"Quite," Sherlock interposed, drily. "But if you could come to the point before _next_ weekend?"

"Yes, of course." She seemed a little flustered now. "Well, this was just yesterday. Sunday. And I . . . Well, I'm afraid I . . ."

She flushed, her already ruddy complexion deepening to an unbecoming colour. Sherlock smiled, not nearly as nicely as he had at Alice.

"You forgot the time change," he said. "So you were late."

"Yes. Not very professional of me, I admit, but—well, I'm human; people do make mistakes sometimes."

"And you also forgot to charge your phone?"

Her flush deepened.

"How did you know _that?_ "

"Obvious. If you hadn't, someone would have called when you didn't show up. I assume you have no landline. And it was Saturday night. You went out for a few drinks after work, came home late, and forgot about your phone—and the clocks."

"Yes," she said, looking at him wonderingly, "that's right. I went out after work with a friend on Saturday night, and when I got back I—well, I wasn't really pissed, I never am, but I was so knackered I completely forgot about changing the clocks or plugging in my phone. I gave up my landline a year ago, so Claire had no way to reach me. She doesn't have a car. I always pick her up in the van, and now Alice, on the way to a job."

"So you were late on Sunday?" That was Greg.

"Later than usual, yes."

"At least an hour later?"

"Just an hour; I was right on time otherwise. And I had no _idea_ there'd be anyone home! We started last week, and there's never been anyone around, even on Saturday, except the security team and the housekeeper."

"What time do you usually get here?" Greg asked.

"Half past seven, most mornings. Never later than eight."

"So you got here by nine on Sunday."

"Yes."

"And someone was here."

"They were _both_ here! Mr. Trevor and Mr. Lance. At least, that's who the agents said it was when they were shooing us out the door."

"You walked in on them?"

"Alice did."

"It wasn't my fault!" Alice wailed. "The door was shut! They're awfully thick doors; you can't hear a thing through them. How was I to know they were in there?"

"You should have knocked!" Susan sounded irritated; they had obviously had this discussion several times before.

"I had my hands full! I was just able to get the knob round, and then I pushed the door open with my foot and there they were, starkers!" She made a funny face, and Greg realized that she was trying to force back another giggle.

"They were in bed?" Greg's voice was suddenly keen with interest.

John looked at him curiously, then remembered: this had happened yesterday, the day after Lance's unexpected return from London, after the night when Mrs. Briden had thought the men had slept apart. Had she been lying? Confused? She'd also said her usual time to come in to cook breakfast was 6:00, and the men were gone when she got there, while these women were saying they'd found the men at home at 9:00.

But, at least when John had been in the room, Mrs. Briden hadn't actually _said_ she'd come in at 6:00 on Sunday, just that she'd been expecting both men to be home when she got there and had been surprised to find them gone. She didn't have to work that day at all; it wasn't her usual schedule. If she was telling the truth, she'd probably been expecting the newly-reunited lovers to be enjoying a slow Sunday morning together and _not_ wanting breakfast at the crack of dawn.

"Bed?" the pretty blonde girl sniffed. "Not on your life! It wouldn't have been half such a scene if they had been. We couldn't have seen nearly so much of them—and you _did_ see them, Claire." (This to the dark-haired woman, who was acting as if avoiding everyone's eyes would make them think she had never had any part in all this). "You know you did, you and Susan both. You were right behind me—and I'm sure they'd have rather we'd caught them making love than fighting."

"They were fighting?" Greg was now very interested indeed.

"Fit to kill."

"Hitting each other? Or just one of them hitting the other?"

There hadn't been any bruises on Trevor's body, as far as Greg had been able to see, but if Trevor had hit Lance perhaps that had angered the younger man enough to bring him back the next morning with a gun.

"Hitting?" Alice sounded genuinely surprised. "Oh, no—not fighting like that, just arguing. Not even shouting all that loud _,_ really—nothing I could hear before I opened the door _._ But you could see how angry they were, even before they started in on me. And yes, I _know_ I shouldn't have laughed, Susan, but there they were, waving their arms at each other, all red in the face and no pants on and everything they had hanging out—it's a wonder I didn't laugh sooner, before that one saw me and made that funny noise."

John and Greg each felt a sudden spasm of sympathy for both Trevor and the otherwise thoroughly unsympathetic Gabriel Lance. Phil Anderson folded his arms across his chest and told himself that, if a girl like Alice ever walked in on _him_ , she'd be too impressed to laugh. Trevor and Lance must be pretty poor stuff. But of course they would be, wouldn't they—guys like them?

"Could you tell what they were arguing about?" Greg asked.

"Some other bloke, I think. The tall one was saying, 'It's him, isn't it? It's always been him. That's why you don't want me anymore,' and the shorter one said not to be ridiculous, but he was still bloody angry about something the taller guy had said before—and then they saw me, and jumped about three feet in the air, and the tall one let out this screech like an angry cat, and I'd just been standing there frozen, but when he did that it sounded so funny, and all his private bits _shook,_ and I couldn't help myself, I started to giggle. And then all hell broke loose: that one screaming horrible things at us, and the other one swearing, and the next thing we knew security was there pointing guns at us and dragging us out and searching us, even though they knew exactly who we were and they'd let us in only ten minutes before. It was just awful!"

"It must have been," Greg said.

"Susan was so mad she said they'd have to find someone else to finish the job, because we were never going back to that place again. But the Minister called her later and apologized. He must have done a really good job of it, because she called Claire and me up and said we'd go back today after all. But," looking meaningfully at Sherlock, "the reason we didn't get here till noon is 'cause Susan said we'd better give them plenty of time to get dressed this morning, and anyway, she wanted a good night's sleep and she'd be damned if she'd bust herself to get here any earlier after the way we'd been treated yesterday."

Susan's face was now beet red.

"Not very professional," she mumbled. "But—you know?"

Greg tried not to smile and failed.

"Nobody here's blaming you, ma'am," he said. "I'm sure."

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The carpenters were clearly not high on Greg's suspect list, John thought—or on Sherlock's, either. Greg ran through a list of questions, checking dates, times, and other details, and they answered with none of the undercurrent of hostility that had marked the interviews with the security agents.

Sherlock went back to pacing around the kitchen and poking in the cupboards and fridge. Greg was just beginning to wonder whether some clue to the murder might be lurking improbably there when the consulting detective exclaimed, "Ah ha!" and emerged from the depths of a well-stocked cupboard with a packet of Hobnobs, which he proceeded to open and eat.

" _Sherlock!"_ Greg growled, reprovingly. He reached across the table and grabbed the packet from the detective.

"Mrs. Briden said to help ourselves," Sherlock said. Greg tried to remember this and couldn't. "She said it to _me,_ " Sherlock added pointedly, reading his mind.

"I'm sure she'd want you to have them," Susan said. "She's always offering us biscuits and anything else we want to eat, along with tea and coffee."

Greg smiled and passed the packet across the table. Susan and Alice helped themselves; Claire declined and passed it back.

"Want one, John?" Greg asked, but the doctor, who was staring out the French doors at the garden, didn't hear him. " _John?_ " Greg repeated.

"Mmm?" John looked up, blinking.

"Biscuit?"

"No thanks."

"You all right?" Greg studied his friend's face with concern.

"I'm fine. It's stuffy in here, though. I think I'll go get some air again."

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Although Sherlock's lack of interest in the police proceedings was obvious, John was surprised when his friend joined him on the lawn outside the French doors. They walked down the garden together, saying nothing but keeping in perfect step with each other. A fine, light rain misted the air.

At the bottom of the garden they found a flagstoned terrace with four Lutyens benches facing each other around a raised flowerbed built of stone and a large stone urn planted with a boxwood topiary and ivy. Behind the terrace ran a tall hedge. Niches had been carved out of it to hold two statues: one of a youthful Pan playing his pipes, and the other of a graceful young Diana, bow in hand and small, happy-looking hounds lying at her feet with their tongues lolling out.

This hedge did not connect to the hedges and security fences on the east and west borders of the property, and could be easily circumnavigated. Walking around it, Sherlock discovered behind it the outbuildings he had noticed from the bedroom window: a small stone shed with a rusty corrugated roof, and a larger building, perhaps six meters square, unattractively built of concrete with narrow slits for windows and a flat roof.

Beyond that was the security fence at the back of the property, and behind that another hedge, even taller than the first and decidedly overgrown. A modern locked gate in the fence and, behind that, an older iron one set into the hedge gave access to the wood, which could be seen through both. Security cameras had been placed on tall poles well inside the fence line, four to each pole, giving 360-degree coverage. A small green light on each indicated that it was on and working.

John lingered on the terrace for a few moments, looking at the statues. Then he walked around the inner hedge to join Sherlock.

"Pretty over-the-top, all this," he observed. "Someone's spent a ton of money on the place: not just the house, but the garden, too. Lance, I suppose—more of his overspending?"

"That inner hedge must have been planted at least ten years ago, judging from its size, so that would have been the earlier owners' effort. The statues are new, though, and the stonework, so yes, those are undoubtedly more of Lance's work, though they may have been designed to please Victor. He had the more traditional taste of the two, but not the impulse to spend this kind of money on himself."

"I wonder why anyone bothered to plant that inner hedge, so close to the one back here?"

"To hide the outbuildings, of course."

"I suppose. They may not be very attractive, but this big one's interesting; it's an old bunker from World War II, part of the GHQ line—that's the hardened defense line the army put up during the war when they thought we were going to be invaded by the Germans."

John walked over to the door of the larger building to look inside, but it was locked. Sherlock had already moved on from the shed and was examining the security fence and the gate in it.

"If Lance was throwing all that money around," John said, giving the padlocked chain a shake to see if it would open, "I'm surprised he didn't just knock these buildings down, and the hedges, too."

"Lot of work; why bother?"

"Gain some more garden and a view of the wood."

"Wouldn't fit his sensibilities. Lance seems to like his nature thoroughly tamed and decorous. Look at those statues: you'd never guess that musical youth was really a hairy old goat whose favourite occupation was chasing down reluctant nymphs to ravish them, or that girl with the bow and puppies a fearsome goddess who wouldn't hesitate to let her dogs tear a man to shreds if he happened to catch her bathing."

John gave his friend a sharp look.

"Your public-school education is showing," he said. "You never deleted that?"

"As examples of the criminal mentality, those stories made a considerable impression on me at an early age. Dismemberment seemed to be a common theme: Pan tore one of the nymphs limb from limb, didn't he? Not unlike Diana and her dogs. It was my fifth-form teacher's salivating delight in expanding on the originals and horrifying the more susceptible students by adding remarkably realistic detail that caught my attention: I deduced from that and various other indicators that he was privately abusing his wife and children, and their lives were at risk."

"Oh." John felt his gut clench, as it always did at that kind of thing. "I see. What . . . happened?"

"I reported it."

"And?"

"I was asked to leave the school."

" _Seriously?_ "

"Naturally. I had anticipated the possibility, of course. My parents were upset, but I wasn't particularly sorry to go."

"What happened to the children?"

"Before I reported him I contacted the girl, who was about my age—I had seen her and her brother occasionally at school events—and arranged to meet her in the village. Over a really quite disgusting Victoria sponge and tea, I told her what I had deduced and suggested that she seek help from the police."

John's eyebrows shot up. He tried to picture this scene actually taking place and couldn't do it.

" _And—?"_ he asked, incredulously.

"She called me a liar and dumped what was left of her sponge over my head."

For a split-second John felt a smile flicker across his face: he had no difficulty picturing _that_ at all. But he was too aware of Sherlock's deductive abilities to imagine that the story could have ended with the teenaged genius being proved wrong.

"And—?" he prompted again, face and voice hardening.

"I was unconvinced by her claims, so I reported him to both the headmaster and the local police."

"Good for you."

"There was nothing particularly good about it. The next morning she and her mother were killed when their car went off a bridge."

"God."

"Her father was driving."

"Jesus. What happened to him?"

"He escaped unharmed."

"Of course. Was he charged?"

"Not at all. There was an investigation, but I was not allowed to participate and the police, with characteristic ineptitude, found no evidence they thought justified a charge. He went back to teaching Ovid—and also, I am quite certain, to abusing his young son, who had somehow survived."

"That's . . . terrible."

Raindrops were dripping off every leaf and flower in the garden. John's face and hair were already wet with them; they were running relentlessly down his neck, inside his collar, down his back. They might have been weeping for the pain of that small boy years ago, for his sister's pain, his mother's, for every hurt and sorrow of the world.

"I believe," Sherlock was saying, "that the abuse was in both cases what is called 'physical' rather than 'sexual,' though I am not convinced that the difference is always as significant as people seem to believe."

John turned his eyes back to his friend, surprised.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"Pain is pain, however it may be inflicted."

"True."

John clenched his fists and unclenched them, feeling the ache deep in his shoulder and leg. They seemed to hurt more in the rain, which was ridiculous, he thought—there was no good reason for either of them to bother him any more, whether it was raining or not. Having come outside in the rain on purpose to cool off, he now wished he was back in the kitchen, having another cup of tea and sitting by the Aga, getting warm and dry.

He hadn't had much experience with sexual abuse victims and therefore had no compelling reason to want to talk about their unique sources of trauma—but his innate sense of fairness wouldn't let him leave the subject where Sherlock had, so he took a deep breath and said, "Don't forget the psychological effects of sexual abuse, though. The intimacy of it, the humiliation, the loss of control over one's own body—those can be extraordinarily damaging to the victim's sense of self."

"And other parts of the body are less intimately connected to self-image? Their abuse less humiliating and destructive?"

Sherlock's voice was cool and detached. John had to fight back a sudden wave of anger so powerful it surprised and shocked him. His lips tightened and he looked away.

He knew the many variations of his flat mate's voice well—could generally tell when he was covering emotions he didn't want others to see and when he wasn't. He wasn't now. His interest in the question was a purely intellectual one, even though he had been acquainted with the girl and her brother, and perhaps their mother as well. John felt his gut lurch at the thought.

The man might call himself a sociopath; John knew he was nothing of the kind. As a teenager he'd obviously been concerned enough about his teacher's family to try to save them, where a genuine sociopath would have left them to their fate. Their deaths in spite of, and perhaps because of, his attempts to help would almost certainly have distressed him at the time—John was sure of that—even though he'd probably been able to mask his feelings well. John would never believe that Sherlock was incapable of empathy, no matter how cold a front he might present to the world.

But now, years after the incident, his interest in the children's story was focused on the intellectual validity of comparing one form of pain and its psychological effects to another. The fact of the suffering and humiliation themselves aroused no anger, no reciprocal pain in him.

"Perhaps," John said, forcing himself to respond evenly to Sherlock's question, while wondering why the disinterested tone of his friend's voice should anger him this much. It wasn't as if it surprised him: for all his professional experience as a medical student, a doctor, and an Army surgeon, there had been many times when he'd found the detective's capacity for clinical detachment hard to take. Just not this hard. "Yes, there's probably some basis for that distinction. People are generally more anxious about exposing their genitals than any other part of their body, after all."

"Are they?"

Sherlock sounded as if he wasn't giving much attention to the conversation any longer. While he'd been talking, he'd been peering through the mesh of the modern gate and examining the old iron one behind it; now he looked up and announced, "Nobody's been through here in quite a while."

"How do you know? Is it rusted shut?" John leaned in to look more closely, more than glad to move on to a different subject.

"I'm sure a determined man could get through here if he could unlock it, but he would have to force the hinges, and the rust would flake away when the gate opened. There's no sign of that. No footprints, either. That barbed wire at the top of the new fencing would have kept most people from climbing over. And those security cameras are well-secured; they haven't been shot out or otherwise interfered with, as far as I can tell."

"How do you think Trevor's killer got in, then?"

Sherlock smiled, the pain of his old friend's death subsumed—at least for the moment—into the pleasure of a puzzle solved.

"Come and see."

He led John back up the lawn. They were almost at the house when Sally Donovan emerged from the kitchen, waving brusquely at them to come inside.

"D.I. wants you," she shouted at them. John had never realized that it was possible to shout and scowl at the same time.

"Of course he does," Sherlock sighed, not breaking stride or changing his direction, which wasn't towards the doors.

The kitchen addition made an L at the back of the original house. Its French doors opened, not onto a terrace, but a grassy lawn bordered by flowerbeds and shrubs that had been planted along the walls of the house. Sherlock paused on the lawn, gazing at the sitting-room windows, the bushes under them, and the first-floor windows above them.

"There's your bricked-up window, Sally," he said.

Sally followed his gaze. There were two windows on the left, which she knew belonged to the master bedroom, and two on the right, which were in the big bathroom. And there, in the middle, was a long rectangle of orangey-red brick that didn't match the rest of the house. Seeing it there took her breath away.

Two-hundred-plus years ago when The Gables was built, there would have been a window there, and behind that window a little room between the two larger ones (both bedrooms in those days) on this side of the house. It would have functioned as a study, perhaps, or a dressing room or child's room, since it had a door to each of the bigger rooms as well as one to the hall. Squinting a little as she looked up at the rectangle of orange brick, Sally thought she could almost see what that room would have been like. It must have been a bright and cheerful place, facing south like that. On bright days sunlight would have poured in through the dappled, wavy window glass to dance on old-fashioned papered walls.

People must have stood in that window, looking out at the garden and the woods and the river. Children must have fallen asleep under it, listening to the nightingales and owls, the wind blowing in the trees. (Sally had spent a month in the country once, and had never forgotten the sounds of it, so different from the constant rumbling, shrill, and grating noises of the city—noises she had never even noticed until she came back to them at the end of that holiday.)

But someone had bricked that window up twenty-odd years ago, along with the door to the hall. Why had they done that? In such a comfortably spacious old house—there were two more large rooms and a bathroom on the north side of the hall—why had anyone felt compelled to brick up a window and a door, to divide a small but surely pleasant room into two dark and cramped spaces? Dark and cramped spaces that could be locked from the outside?

She thought of Phil's insinuations and shivered again.

"I said, _the D.I. wants you in there_ ," she said angrily to Sherlock, anger being a more comfortable emotion than whatever it was she was feeling—she couldn't have put a name to it if she'd been asked to. But Sherlock had vanished.

"What the hell?" she snapped at John. "Where's that fr—that berk gone now?"

John ignored her. There was a fierce quality to his silence that made Sally look at him again. He was standing on the balls of his feet, every muscle taut, his mouth set in a hard, tight line as he stared at the house. Under the bedroom windows were the ground-floor windows, and under them a mass of camellia bushes—which Sally now realized were shaking in a way that could hardly be accounted for by the rain.

"Oi, you! What are you doing?" she shouted, heading for the bushes. But Sherlock was already crawling out from under them and springing gracefully back to his feet.

"What were you after under there?" Sally demanded. "What did you find?"

Sherlock leaned down to brush the dirt from his trousers.

"What you didn't," he said, and strode back to the kitchen without saying anything more. John turned abruptly and followed him. His jaw was still set, his fists clenched at his sides. He'd been in the Army, Sally remembered. A soldier. _Were_ Army doctors soldiers? She had no idea. "Soldier" wasn't the way she usually thought of John Watson, but looking at him now, she couldn't get the word out of her mind.

000000

They found Greg standing by the kitchen table, gathering his notes from the interviews together and slipping them into a file that Anderson handed to him.

"I'm going to talk to the neighbours now," he said when Sherlock came in. "You want to come?"

He was expecting a "no" and was surprised when Sherlock nodded. They left the house by the front doors and walked up the drive to the main gate. John, Anderson, and Sally followed.

"They're a couple of little old ladies," Greg said, glancing pointedly at Sherlock. "They might give us tea, but try to stay out of their cupboards, would you? And if you could manage not to yawn too visibly while they're talking, that would be a plus, too."

Sally snorted. Phil grinned. Sherlock remarked acidly that Mrs. Briden _had_ told him before she left to help himself to biscuits; he was not in the habit of raiding other people's pantries uninvited.

"Hmm. Wonder what Mrs. Hudson would say about that?" Greg said, turning to share a smile with John. But John had his phone out and seemed preoccupied in sheltering it from the rain with his arm while he checked his messages. As the gate opened for them, he finally looked up from the screen.

"I should call Harry," he said, abruptly. "I'll stay back here to do it, if you don't mind."

Sherlock shot him a questioning look but said nothing. Greg sighed. He wanted John along to keep Sherlock in line, but he could hardly insist on it if the man wanted to talk to his sister in private.

"Sure," he said. "There's good reception in the house; go back and get out of the rain. The copper at the door will let you in."

John nodded.

As the gate closed behind the others and they turned towards the neighbouring cottage, Sherlock glanced back. Through the tall iron bars of the fence he could just see John. He was sitting on an ornamental bench at the edge of the lawn, next to the little copse of pine and birch that shielded the house from the gate. His hands seemed to be gripping the edge of his seat and he was staring fixedly at the graceful Georgian façade of the house in front of him, as if the last thing on earth he wanted to do was to pick up his phone again and call his sister.

It was still raining.

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	13. Chapter 13

Notes: My thanks once again to Fang's Fawn for her comments, edits, and encouragement.

Chapter 13:

Lestrade, Sally, Phil Anderson—who had recently asked the D.I. to let him sit in on interviews, as he was hoping to earn a promotion—and Sherlock were greeted at the cottage door by a sixty-ish woman with greying brown hair and a warm smile that faded quickly to an expression of horror as Greg explained what had happened at The Gables. She introduced herself as Pansy Briers and asked them to come in.

Her sitting-room was small and stuffed to the wallpaper with floral fabrics, china knick-knacks, little arrangements of dried flowers, and scores of framed photographs that peered at the visitors from every available surface. It was a chilly day, and a fire was burning brightly on the hearth. An elderly woman who was sitting beside it in a faded but comfortable-looking armchair seemed to be absorbed in fiddling with the catch on an enormous plastic pillbox—the kind designed to hold enough pills for a week, with separate compartments for each day's doses. Curled up at her feet was an equally elderly (in dog terms) springer spaniel.

Pansy introduced the woman as her mother-in-law, Mabel Briers. Mabel peered up at Greg with red-rimmed, watery eyes but said nothing after "Hello," even after Pansy explained what the police were there about. The dog sat halfway up when they came into the room, gave Greg, Sherlock, Sally, and Phil a considering look, then flapped its tail once, sank back down to its side, closed its eyes again and went to sleep.

Pansy darted into the kitchen to put on the kettle, but continued to talk the entire time, shouting out over her shoulder a long explanation of how she and her husband, Tom—who had been away for the past week on a business trip to Germany, but would be back on Wednesday—had moved in with his mother last year, because Tom had retired from his job as an accountant with a firm in Manchester and was now pursuing his long-cherished dream of working with a childhood friend to make and sell hand-built motorbikes, while Pansy had been quite ready to leave _her_ job as a secretary at a junior school because really, even the little ones were more like monsters than darlings these days, and Tom's Mum hadn't been doing so well on her own—so since Tom's bike-building friend Davey still lived not far from here, and real estate in this part of Essex was _so_ expensive compared to the north, and Mum _really_ wasn't doing so well on her own anymore, it had seemed best that she (Pansy) and Tom move back into the cottage, as they had twenty-odd years ago for a time when money had been tight and the children—who were all grown up now, and off on their own—had been small, which was just as well, Pansy simply couldn't have coped in this cottage if they'd been much bigger, since, as anyone could see, there wouldn't have been the _space._

Pansy got all this out with barely a pause for breath. Greg sighed inwardly, but put on a smile along with his patience, realizing from long experience that he'd get further with Pansy that way than any other. Sherlock was already gritting his teeth in irritation and pacing about the room, picking up the photographs one by one and looking at them intently.

"We'll do our best to help you, of course," Pansy said, coming back to the sitting room with a heavily laden tea tray. "But I'm afraid we don't know Mr. Trevor very well, or his friend. They've only been here a year. We've spoken once or twice, but he's a very busy man—I mean, he _was_ a very busy man. Oh, dear—such a terrible thing to have happen! And with all those guards around the place these past few months, too. You wouldn't think _anything_ could have happened with all that security there, would you?"

"Should have had those guards long before," Mabel—the old lady—put in suddenly. "That poor woman! And the dear little boy!"

"No, Mum," Pansy said, handing Greg a cup of tea and giving him a meaningful look. "That was years ago. The Inspector doesn't want to know about that."

The old lady was still fussing with the catch of her pillbox, but she looked up at Greg more sharply than she had before.

"You should _do_ something about it, if you're really police, like Pansy says. That poor, poor woman!"

Pansy rolled her eyes at Greg, who nodded understandingly.

"Nothing happened to her, Mum," she said, soothingly. "It's poor Mr. Trevor we have to think about now. He's been murdered."

"Nothing _happened_ to her? Huh! He led her an awful life, he did. I always said so."

"I meant, nothing like what's happened to Mr. Trevor, Mum. She just left, remember? With another man, they said, or maybe it was another woman, though I always thought—"

"What do _you_ know about it, Pansy? They should have looked in the pillbox. I _told_ them to look in the pillbox!" Mabel had finally managed to get the cover of her box opened, and now peered into it. "But they didn't. That poor woman. And that lovely boy!"

Sherlock made an exasperated noise, but continued studying the photographs on the shelves and tables in the crowded little room.

"Mum, _please._ " Pansy had been pouring out tea and offering it silently to each of her visitors while she went on dealing with her mother-in-law. Sally took a cup, followed with alacrity by Phil, but Sherlock ignored Pansy's offer. She tried to catch his eye several times before giving up and setting the cup down again on the tray, where it sat, unwanted, growing cold. "I told you, Mum, the Inspector doesn't want to know about all that. He's trying to find out what happened to Mr. Trevor next door, who's just been killed."

"I'm sorry, dear." The old lady fumbled to try to take a pill out of the box, but couldn't seem to get a grip on it.

"Not now, Mum," Pansy said. "It's not time for your pill yet."

"Isn't it? I thought it was."

"No, Mum. Not till four. I'm so sorry, Inspector," Pansy looked up at him brightly. "You were saying?"

"Did you see anything unusual this morning, Mrs. Briers?" Greg asked, grateful for the opportunity to fit a question in at last. "Anything out of the norm next door—before the police arrived, I mean?"

"No, Inspector, nothing. But I wouldn't, you know—it's half a mile or more to their house, and that hedge and the big fence in between."

"Drinking champagne again, he was," the old lady put in, with sudden animation. "Down on that terrace at the bottom of the garden. I heard him, just like that other time."

" _Mum!_ "

"What's this?" Greg asked, baffled.

"Just her nonsense," Pansy whispered, but not quietly enough. Mabel bristled.

"It _isn't_ nonsense, Pansy! I heard him this morning, you know I did. I told you at breakfast—just like that other time."

"What time would this have been, ma'am?" Greg asked. The woman might be old and confused, but that didn't mean she hadn't heard something that could help them.

"Time that woman went, like I told you."

"Mum, the Inspector means, 'What time do you think you heard Mr. Trevor drinking on his terrace?' You said 'this morning,' but what _time_ this morning?"

"Oh, early it was. Before dawn. I was out getting mugwort, and you have to pick that before dawn if it's to do any good."

Anderson rolled his eyes. Sherlock snorted audibly. Pansy's face flushed.

"She doesn't do readings or magic or anything like that," she explained, eyeing Greg with obvious embarrassment, "but she believes in some of those old remedies in the herbals, and thinks _when_ you pick the plants—moonlight, or just before dawn—matters. We've talked about this, Mum—Tom and I don't like you going out by yourself at night like that."

"It wasn't _night,_ the old lady protested. "I went just before sunrise. You don't want to get up then, you always say it's a fool's errand, but that Mrs. Barrow at church, her daughter's going through the change, she's got the night sweats so bad she doesn't know what to do, and I told her there's nothing like a bit of mugwort for that. It worked wonders for you, Pansy, you know it did." Pansy flushed more deeply, picked up Sherlock's neglected cup of tea, and took a sip from it herself—perhaps hoping the wide-mouthed china cup would provide a little cover for her flaming face. "But you have to pick it just before the sun comes up," her mother-in-law finished triumphantly.

"Oh, for god's sake!" Sherlock exclaimed.

" _Sherlock,_ " Greg cautioned. Sherlock decided it was more than time to retreat from this unbearably unscientific nonsense into the entryway—which, in addition to hooks stuffed with coats, a stand bristling with umbrellas, and a tiny table laden with more photographs, included the attraction of the stairs.

"Where were you when you thought you heard something?" Greg asked, glancing with disapproval after Sherlock as he disappeared around the corner and up the stairs.

"I told you, picking mugwort."

"Where would that be, ma'am?"

"On the edge of Dick Fordham's field, of course, in the hedgerow." She seemed surprised he wouldn't know.

"That's just on the other side of The Gables," Pansy explained. "She'll have gone through the gate at the bottom of our garden and along the top of the wood behind The Gables, then over the fence into the Fordhams' field—it's faster than going along the road."

"She climbed over a fence by herself?" Greg asked, bemused.

"There's a public footpath that runs along the edge of the field there, and a stile. We don't like her scrambling over it alone, especially in the dark, but she's always done it and refuses to stop."

"It isn't _dark,"_ the old lady insisted. "I take a lantern. That's better than a torch," she explained, looking at Greg, having apparently grasped that he was unfamiliar with the practices of herbalism. "The plants don't mind a flame, but the electric light will kill them. And I heard him in the garden, drinking champagne."

"How much before dawn would this have been?" Greg asked, suddenly very curious indeed.

"An hour's best," the old lady said.

"So . . .?" Greg looked at Sally, who set her recording device down, picked up her phone, and searched for "Sunrise, March 26, 2012."

"Sunrise was six-forty-six this morning," Sally said, a moment later.

"Would you say you left the house around a quarter to six, then?" Greg asked Mabel. She tipped her head and nodded in the direction of the mantelpiece, in the centre of which was a large, old-fashioned clock.

"Quarter past five, that said."

"That one's always fast," Pansy whispered. "But she doesn't move so quickly anymore. She was probably in the field by 5:30. But this is all nonsense! Mr. Trevor couldn't possibly have been drinking champagne on his terrace an hour before dawn!"

"No," Greg agreed. "That part's not very likely. But it sounds like she heard _something_ then."

A gunshot, he was thinking. The old lady could have heard the shot that killed Trevor. A .45 was one of the few types of ammunition that could only be used in a handgun, not a rifle, and the window had been shut, so the shot had to have come from inside the house—but it might well have been audible outside, even at some distance. Perhaps, to the old lady's aging and inexperienced ears, the sound of the shot had registered as the harmless _pop!_ of a champagne bottle being opened. Though in that case, why had none of the agents reported hearing anything? Greg had put that down tentatively to the thick old walls and doors in the Georgian house combined with the use of a suppressor, but if this old woman had heard it. . . .

"I wouldn't put too much on it," Pansy whispered to him. "Mum's still quite clear at times, but when she isn't. . ."

The daughter-in-law rolled her eyes. The old lady looked up and fixed her with a watery glare.

"I know what you think, Pansy," she said, with surprising dignity, "but I _did_ hear it. Just as I was getting my wort. It made me jump! And then one of those great dogs came snuffling through that hole in the fence and peeing all over the primroses. I can't bear those creatures, never could, so I just hurried up the path to the road and came home as fast as I could."

It was at this point that Sherlock slipped back into the room. Greg frowned at him before looking at Pansy questioningly.

"Mr. Trevor had a dog?"

"Not that I know of."

"It was another neighbour's, then?"

"Was it Mr. Fordham's Lab, Mum?"

"No, I told you—that monstrous great thing, like before. Bigger'n a pony and striped all over like a tiger, with its jowls hanging down to the ground. I'm sure those jaws could break a man's back; it's a wonder that boy survived, let alone ever walked again. You remember I told you at breakfast, Pansy—you be _careful_ going outside if one of those things is on the loose again."

Greg felt a quiver of excitement. So someone had been in the woods an hour before dawn, just at the time of the murder; someone who'd brought a dog—a distinctive dog—with him; someone who'd been there with the dog before. They ought to be able to do something with that. It sounded like an illegal breed, too, which suggested ties to the criminal world—there was a trade in banned breeds that included smuggling from Eastern Europe, though nobody in Revenue and Customs wanted to admit that it could happen. But if this was the murderer, how had he—or she—managed to get into the property, let alone the house?

"I wouldn't place too much on it, Mr. Lestrade," Pansy said again. "She's always fussing about big dogs. We had some trouble once, a long time ago, with the people who lived in that house, and she's never forgotten it."

"Trouble? At The Gables?"

"Oh, it wasn't 'The Gables' then! Just a run-down old farmhouse, all creeping damp and broken plaster and rusty plumbing—you wouldn't know it if you saw a photo of the old place, it's been so gussied up since. The man who owned it back then—twenty, twenty-five years ago, it must be—didn't want to live in it, so he leased it out. Some of the tenants were a bit, well. . . ." She hesitated.

Greg was eager to get back to the subject of that morning, but he'd interviewed enough women like Pansy to know he'd get there faster if he let her tell the story at her own pace and in her own way. She was the kind of witness who was likely to get flustered and start to edit her speech too much if Greg hinted at any impatience with her digressions. He'd rather have too much information from her than too little; they needed all they could get.

So he gave Sherlock a warning look, directed another at Anderson—who was rolling his eyes at Sally, making Greg wonder why, exactly, he'd agreed to Anderson's request to sit in—and helped Pansy along by suggesting, "A bit dodgy?"

"Well—yes, rather. Though the woman was really very sweet. What _was_ her name? I'm simply terrible with names; I can't . . . oh, Morris, maybe. Mrs. Morris. Or was it Morrison? Something like that. She was a dear, and so pretty, poor thing. A bit helpless, of course—always drifting around taking pictures of flowers and writing poems and things like that, but not much good at managing a home, really, even before she started. . . .well, you know. Poor thing."

Greg raised his eyebrows. Pansy nodded, as if taking this gesture to mean that he understood what she didn't want to say—which, in fact, he was fairly certain he did.

" _He_ must have been a terror to live with," she went on, after this unspoken exchange. "But he was _so_ good-looking. This was just a few years after the Falklands War—he had fought in it—he was with the regiment in Colchester, I remember, and he _did_ look terribly dashing in his uniform; I suppose she fell for that. I daresay he was quite nice to her at first—they always are, aren't they, these men?—and then, afterwards, she didn't know how to get out of it. He had the job, you see, while she stayed home. She must have been terrified of what would happen if she left him."

"It's often like that," Greg agreed.

"I suppose you see a lot of that sort of thing, don't you? The poor dear; she wasn't really much younger than me, but she seemed like such a child. I felt sorry for her. It wasn't surprising she couldn't cope, really, especially once she got into the. . . . Well, you know, a glass of wine can seem like such a _comfort,_ can't it, when things are hard? Some people would judge her for it, but I never could. My cousin Annie, she was just the same; I always said it was that man she'd married who drove her to it. And it's a disease, really, isn't it? Once you start, it isn't easy to stop. But it must have been terribly hard on the children."

"There were children?"

"Of _course_ there were children," Sherlock—who had been pacing the room restlessly, picking up photographs and putting them down again—put in impatiently. "What sentimental tale would be complete without them? For god's sake, Lestrade—"

"Be _quiet_ , Sherlock," Greg snapped. To his surprise, Sherlock actually did close his mouth and plopped down in one of the chairs. Every movement conveyed disdain as he draped one long leg over the other, looked out the window at the rain—which was falling harder than before—and drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair.

"Yes, there were children, poor dears," Pansy said, apparently oblivious to the by-play between her visitors. "It was the boy who kept things together for a long time. Funny, isn't it? You'd think it would be the girl. She was older, and, well, that's what girls do, usually—or _did,_ anyway, back then—but she went quite wild: started skipping school, and cutting her hair off all jagged, and putting such strange colours in it, and safety-pins through her ears and things. And her _clothes!_ Punk, they called it, then. She came home with a tattoo once; I remember her poor mother was so upset she cried on my shoulder about it over a cup of tea one afternoon. That was before everyone had them; it seemed quite awful to us then."

Greg nodded. Sherlock hissed with impatience but said nothing.

"The boy wasn't like that at all, though. We were terribly fond of him, Tom and I, and Mother and Dad, too—he was always clean and tidy, and so polite. Not like boys nowadays! But you didn't meet many boys that nice, even then. He was always trying to look after his mother. I'd see him in the village doing their shopping—we had a shop in St. Mary's in those days—and sometimes he'd ask me how to cook something new. Kedgeree, I remember, and what to do with chops, and how to make my seedy cake. He always said he wanted to surprise his mother by getting a meal ready as a treat for her, but when it all came out we learned he'd been doing all the cooking, _all_ of it, for a long time. She was drinking and couldn't manage, like I said, and that father of his would never have lifted a hand to help; he was the kind who'd expect to be waited on hand and foot, and would make an awful row about it if he wasn't. He was always angry about something. A real terror, like I said."

Greg nodded again, grimly. He'd known cases like that, where a child had to grow up before his time and run a home like an adult, because the adults weren't doing it for him. There were worse things, of course, but it had always troubled Greg—he was no psychiatrist, but from what he'd seen he thought it was more damaging than people realized. But Pansy was still talking.

". . . . And good at school! I remember when he took his Eleven-Plus. He was worried about it, but he got into the very best school—the grammar school—and did so well there! I don't know how he managed it, with everything he had to do at home. And with what that man was doing to him. It made me cry, afterwards, when we found out. Because of course we didn't _know. . . ._ Though I suppose we should have guessed. But one doesn't like to interfere, and we really didn't know the whole of it, not at all. . . ."

Pansy's voice trailed away. Sherlock looked at his watch and scowled.

"Very affecting, I'm sure," he drawled, sarcastically. "Quite the little boyhood saint and martyr. I, for one, would be grateful if we could now leave this exercise in hagiography and move on to more pressing matters—Lestrade, kindly remove your hand from my arm. You're going to leave a bruise."

There was a snort of laughter from Phil Anderson and a sudden growl from the elderly spaniel that had been sleeping beside the old lady's chair. Everyone looked down in surprise. It was on its feet, hobbling towards Sherlock and Greg and showing its teeth at Greg.

" _Toby!"_ Pansy rebuked the dog, sounding quite shocked. " _Stop_ that right now!"

The dog looked at her and then back at Greg and Sherlock. It made a more tentative noise, somewhere between a growl and a whine.

"I'm so sorry," Greg said, tightening his grip a little harder before releasing Sherlock's arm. The apology was addressed to Pansy, and was meant to cover both his companion's rudeness and the neighbours' twenty-year-plus-old troubles. "That must have been very difficult for you, Mrs. Briers."

The dog sat down next to Sherlock's chair but kept its eyes fixed watchfully on Greg, whom it had apparently identified as a threat.

"It was," Pansy sighed. "It really _was_ hard on everyone who knew them, when it came out. The things he'd done to that boy. . . ."

Sherlock stared at the ceiling and sighed, loudly. Greg's mouth twisted. After a career in the Met he knew only too well the kinds of things some men did to their sons.

"You mentioned something about dogs?" he said, hoping to steer her back to the present. The spaniel leaned against Sherlock's leg. Sherlock looked down at it, surprised.

"The dogs were the worst, I suppose," Pansy said. "Though I don't know—my friend Maggie, she was a nurse up at the hospital then, she told me it wasn't just the bites she saw when he was brought in, though those were awful—they thought he might lose a leg, he was that torn up—but he was black and blue all over, too. Older bruises, one on top of another. And there were scars . . . . It had been going on a long time. When I was a girl, men often belted their sons. You expected it, like the strap at school. But not like that. Not what Maggie saw—that was never all right. What kind of man does that to his boy? Or would set those dogs on him?"

"A brute, I'm afraid. Some men do terrible things to children, just because they can."

"I suppose so."

"I hope he got what was coming to him?"

The spaniel was butting its head against Sherlock's knee now. Unnoticed by anyone in the room, Sherlock's hand dropped down and he began rubbing, almost absentmindedly, behind Toby's ears.

"Not that I ever heard. Lieutenant—oh, goodness, what did I say their name was? Oh, yes, Morrison. Or was it Morris? No, Morrison, I think, or something like that. Yes, well, Morrison told the police the dogs had never done such a thing before, it took him completely by surprise—etc., etc. He claimed the boy had got the bruises and the scars in fights at school. As if a fistfight could leave marks like that! And as if that boy ever made any trouble at school! Col. Pettigrew from up the road was furious about it. He was the one who heard the row and came to the rescue. He had to beat the dogs off the boy and shoot them—it was hunting season and he had his shotgun with him—and that was how it all came out. But the boy wouldn't say a thing, and the Lieutenant had a good record in the Army—he'd fought in the Falklands, and his C.O. vouched for him, and I think he was from a good family and had connections who intervened—so they never did lay charges and he got off scot-free."

"The boy wouldn't testify?" In spite of all the reasons for needing to move the subject on, Greg found himself wanting to know more. It was the kind of story that always got to him. He hated nothing more than perps who victimized children, or cops and judges who let them go free.

"Not a word. I suppose he just wanted to get back to his mother. They'd put him in care, you know, while he was in hospital and they were looking into what happened. He must have been afraid he wouldn't get to go home to her again if he didn't keep his mouth shut. Worried sick about her, too, I don't doubt—he was always trying to look after her, poor child. But she actually managed to pull herself together and kick the brute out afterwards, and stop the drinking. They let her have the children back then, and things were better for a while."

"That's good."

"It was, while it lasted. But it didn't last long, I'm afraid. Just a few months, and then. . . ." Pansy shook her head, as if she still couldn't quite believe what the young mother had done.

"You said she left?"

"Yes, all of a sudden, out of the blue. The boy came home from school one day and she was gone. She'd left a note on the kitchen table saying she was terribly sorry, but she just couldn't do it anymore—and that was that. The police searched for her—the children were still minors—but they never found her. People were saying she'd run off with another man, even another woman—all the usual talk. I was afraid she'd done something worse."

"Suicide, you mean?"

"I'm afraid so."

Greg nodded. He'd seen it happen too many times before: the children of chaotic, dysfunctional families were spared very little, one terrible blow often followed by another and another, as the adults around them shattered under the pressure of their own damaged personalities and the difficult circumstances of their lives.

Sherlock, meanwhile, was wishing he could retreat into his mind palace and block Pansy's annoying voice out completely, but he was finding that impossible while she babbled on. There was nowhere else to escape to: he had already scoured the tiny bedrooms upstairs and had no desire to return to them. If it hadn't been so wet out, he would have left the house altogether just to get away. But it looked miserable out there, and he was not fond of getting unnecessarily wet.

Besides, there was the dog. The elderly spaniel leaned against his leg ecstatically as he shifted his attentions from its ears to the soft spot under its chin. Sherlock had no desire to stop doing this: it was having an unexpectedly calming effect on the thoughts that were frantically pulling his mind in too many directions at once.

Victor's death. The way he had looked, older but still so familiar, lying there lifeless on the floor. The memories that the sight of him brought back, along with the ones that the visit to Astor Mews had opened up yesterday. The portrait—oh, god, the portrait. The urgent necessity of finding the murderer before the murderer found him. The frustration of not having seen what he was looking for amongst the photographs. The more-than-frustration at being trapped in this suffocating room with this infuriating woman and her insufferable, sentimental story. The anger with himself that had been eating at him ever since he had told John that story of his own.

Whatever had made him do that? It wasn't the sort of thing he _did_ , and the experience certainly wasn't one he had wanted to revisit. It had been one of his first cases. His deductions had been proven correct, but the results showed that the actions he had taken had been poorly thought-out, and even after the death of the girl and her mother he had been unable to convince the police of what he knew to be true. The whole experience had been intensely frustrating and humiliating, and also distressing in ways that had reminded him of what, for a time, he had almost forgotten: the importance of barricading his thought against _caring_ and _sentiment,_ against emotional attachment and investment, as Mycroft had always insisted he should.

So he had built the barriers back up again. He just hadn't done it well enough. Though John would undoubtedly say that he had done it _too_ well—and he wasn't the only person Sherlock had actually liked and trusted who'd thought that, either. Victor . . . . But that whole business with Victor would never have happened if he'd done a better job of holding himself aloof and keeping his distance. And as for yesterday and today—he'd made a complete hash of controlling his emotions for the past thirty-six hours. To make things worse, Mycroft _knew_ what he'd been feeling. Had known he'd feel it. Had tried to keep him from coming here so he wouldn't have to feel it. Had _pitied_ him for feeling it. Sherlock could think of nothing more mortifying.

John, of course, would see things differently, would say Sherlock's reactions yesterday and this morning were natural and good. John was always determined to see Sherlock in the best light possible, but that was because he was an idiot. (Which wasn't fair—Sherlock knew that, by most people's standards, John was actually a very intelligent man. But he wasn't a Holmes, and so his opinion of Sherlock shouldn't be allowed to weigh against Sherlock's own, let alone Mycroft's.)

The most unsettling part of all this was Sherlock's certainty that he wouldn't have reacted to Gabriel Lance's schemes or Victor's death with anything like as much sentiment as he had, if it hadn't been for the other . . . _feelings_ he'd been unable to shut out of his celebrated, supposedly brilliant, mind. The ones that had been underlying, overlying, and running through every other thought he'd had for the past two weeks, that were constantly niggling at him with their concern—their anxiety, even—about John: _feelings,_ not logical thoughts, that prodded him to wonder what was wrong with John; whether it was Sherlock's fault for miscalculating the effects of that drug at Baskerville; how angry John really was with him over it; and whether this was all going to go bad on him again, the way it had all those years ago—because even though this was an entirely different situation and John's reasons for reacting would be quite different from Victor's, what Victor had said was still true: he, Sherlock, really _was_ incapable of functioning like a normal human being and shouldn't expect that anyone would ever be willing to put up with him for more than a few. . . .

Sherlock sucked his breath in sharply. Here he was, doing it _again._ Mycroft would be merciless in mocking this idiotic lack of mental discipline, of basic self-control, if he knew about it. And that wretched woman was still nattering pointlessly on at Lestrade about the problems of her neighbours twenty-odd years ago! He was going to go insane if he had to hear much more of her nonsense. Ignoring the spaniel's whimpers, he pushed Toby aside, got to his feet, and started to pace around the room again.

"I couldn't imagine her leaving her children," Pansy was saying. "Not after working so hard to get them back—not unless she'd had some kind of breakdown, you know? I think she must have found it too hard to stay off the drink, and got into a state, and come to think the kids would be better off without her. I wish she'd talked to me first! But she didn't."

"What happened to the boy?" _Lestrade actually seemed_ _ **interested**_ _,_ Sherlock thought. _What was the matter with him? Had he forgotten he had a murder to investigate? Well, naturally he had. He was an idiot. . . ._

"It was terribly hard on him. He came here, that afternoon, to ask if he could use our phone to call the police—they didn't have one; couldn't afford it—and he showed me the note then. He was almost fifteen, but he was crying. He couldn't help it: he kept trying to wipe his face and pull himself together, but he couldn't stop. I remember thinking I'd like to kill that woman! And then I realized that was probably what she'd gone and done to herself. I didn't tell him, of course, but I expect he guessed. He was too bright not to."

"Poor kid." Lestrade's voice was sympathetic. _Moron,_ Sherlock thought. _What does it_ _ **matter**_ _?_ "I suppose they put him in foster care again?"

Pansy nodded.

"I'd have had him here, room or no room, but they wouldn't let me—you have to be certified and we weren't, and it was just around then that Tom got the job in Manchester and we had to move, and Mum and Dad didn't feel they could take on the responsibility at their age. I remember worrying myself sick about leaving Jamie like that, but there really wasn't anything else we could do."

"Jamie?" the old lady said, looking up suddenly and blinking at her daughter-in-law with watery eyes. "Who's Jamie, Pansy?"

"Jamie Morrison, Mum—you remember, that nice boy who used to live next door, the one with the terrible father who set the dogs on him."

"Not Jamie," her mother-in-law said, shaking her head. "He had another name. But I can't remember. . . ."

"Yes, that's right!" Pansy surprised both Sherlock and Greg by agreeing with the old woman for once. "He _did_ have another name—his father called him something else, didn't he? Fancy you remembering that! I don't recall it now, either—but his mother called him Jamie, I know that for sure."

Sherlock hissed impatiently again. Anderson rolled his eyes. Greg sighed.

In spite of the urgency of the Trevor case, Greg had found himself drawn in by Pansy's story. Much of it was all too familiar to him: he'd seen many, many cases of children's lives damaged or destroyed by their parents' drinking and abuse, abandonment or suicide. The business with the dogs made this one stand out, though. Child-beating was common enough, even now, but the thought of a man doing something like that to his son made Greg wish he could step back in time and onto the case: he would take a savage pleasure in decimating the brute's lies in the interview room, cutting the strings pulled by the influential relatives, and seeing the bastard put away for a long time.

But it had all happened twenty-odd years ago. The only connection between Pansy's decades-old tale and Victor Trevor's murder was the presence of a large dog—hardly a rarity in the British countryside. Greg cleared his throat.

"These dogs you mentioned—your mother-in-law thought she saw the same kind this morning?"

Pansy nodded.

"Yes, I remember she talked about it at breakfast. But she often does, you know; any big dog on the loose has scared her since that business with the Morrisons. That's why I told you about it, so you'd understand. Though I suppose I went on far too long, didn't I? You didn't want to know all that!"

Greg smiled a little.

"That's quite all right," he said. "Now, why did your mother-in-law think someone was on the terrace—er, drinking champagne? Did she see them?"

Pansy turned back to the old woman.

"The Inspector wants to know who you saw on Mr. Trevor's terrace this morning, Mum. The person you thought was drinking champagne?"

"Someone was. I heard them."

"What did you hear?" Greg asked. "Men's voices? Women's?"

The old lady looked at him through rheumy eyes, shook her head, and gave her attention back to her pillbox.

"You said there was a dog as well?" Greg prompted, gently.

"It got through the woods fence. There's a hole in that fence; Mr. Fordham really ought to fix it."

"The dog was big, you say?" Greg said. "And striped—or brindled, I suppose?" That might be a lead that they could use—if there was anything in this story at all.

"Striped like a tiger, like the other ones. Pansy, why is this man here? I've forgotten."

"He's a detective from New Scotland Yard, Mum. He's trying to find out who killed Mr. Trevor."

"Mr. Trevor?"

"Our neighbor, Mum. The Cabinet Secretary. From next door, at The Gables."

"The Gables?"

"The house next door. They call it that now."

"Never used to call it that. Never used to call it anything, just Robinson's farm."

"I know, Mum. The people before Mr. Trevor and his friend fixed it up and gave it the name."

"Our neighbour's dead?"

"Yes, Mum."

"Murdered?"

"Yes, Mum."

"Have they looked in the pillbox? That's where the body will be. I told them, but they wouldn't listen to me: I heard him, that night, in the pillbox with the dogs." And she gave her box a mournful rattle again.

Pansy looked up helplessly at Greg, shaking her head.

"Don't pay any attention," she whispered. "She goes on like that when she gets upset. The nurse at the clinic keeps telling her not to get her pills mixed up and be sure to take them on time; she gets so worried about it she dreams at night about losing that box or finding things in it that couldn't possibly be there. It's funny, really—I mean, bodies or dogs in a pillbox! Like that thing they taught us in school, about angels dancing on the head of a pin."

Greg's smile didn't reach his eyes. When Sherlock let out another dramatic sigh, he had to restrain himself forcibly from echoing it. The champagne-drinking man and the tiger-striped dog would, he was quite certain, prove to be nothing more than products of the elderly lady's over-medicated and obviously decaying old mind.

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	14. Chapter 14

My apologies for the long delay in posting. It's been a busy summer! I meant this chapter to be longer, but I think I'll just post what I've got now and save the rest for the next one.

Chapter 14:

The rain was coming down harder than ever. Pansy fluttered around her visitors as they were leaving, pressing packets of sticky ginger cake wrapped in waxed paper into their hands, and insisting that they borrow her umbrellas for the short but wet walk back to The Gables. Sally accepted a flowery pink umbrella gratefully. Greg tried to demur, but found himself unable to stand firm in the face of Pansy's insistent hospitality.

"Thank you, Mrs. Briers," he said, giving way at last and taking the proffered umbrella (a large black one), along with a packet of cake. "You're very kind."

"All this rain!" she exclaimed again. "The garden needs it, of course, but _still. . . ._ "

"Your garden looks lovely," Greg offered, wanting to say something by way of a thank-you for the tea and umbrellas. Sherlock jerked his head impatiently. Pansy beamed, obviously delighted.

"It's nothing like the one next door, of course," she said, modestly. "That's _really_ beautiful! People are always wanting to see it. Mr. Trevor used to open it up for a few days every spring and summer, before he became a Minister and they had to put all that security in to keep him safe." She paused, obviously remembering that the security hadn't succeeded in keeping him safe. "Poor man," she sighed. Greg cleared his throat.

"I guess we should be getting back," he tried, but Pansy—who was standing in front of the door, unintentionally blocking it—kept talking.

"Some of the tourists liked The Gables so much they wanted to live there themselves, you know. Mr. Trevor had ever so many offers to buy the place—Muriel Briden, who cooks for them, told me. But he didn't want to sell. I suppose that Mr. Lance will now; Muriel says he's never really seemed to take to the place like Mr. Trevor, even though he's always fussing with it, putting in new kitchens and such."

She sniffed disdainfully, showing what she thought of the need for new kitchens.

"Just _one_ kitchen," Sherlock muttered under his breath. "And now, Lestrade, if you're _quite_ finished with this farce," he said, and reached past Pansy for the door knob. She stepped hastily out of his way.

"Wouldn't you like—" she began, gesturing vaguely towards the umbrella stand, but he ignored her, popped his collar, and swept out the door, coattails fluttering behind him.

"I'm sorry," Greg apologized. "He does tend to be a bit abrupt, I'm afraid."

Sally suppressed a snort. Phil Anderson didn't bother. Greg scowled at them both, thanked Pansy for her hospitality, and left. They were no sooner out of earshot—Pansy remained in the doorway, waving after them as if they were her oldest and dearest friends—than Sally and Phil turned to their D.I. in unison.

" _He_ shouldn't be on this case," Sally hissed, glaring after Sherlock as he left the long front garden by the gate and vanished behind the privet hedge. "He's way too involved!"

"Sally's right," Phil echoed. "He's up to his neck in this, sir. You've _got_ to take him off."

Greg didn't even try to pretend he didn't know who they were talking about.

"We need him," he said, heavily.

"We _don't!_ " Phil protested. "We can do this ourselves!"

"It's not appropriate," Sally said. "He's admitted that portrait was _him._ "

Greg frowned. He had given this a good deal of thought already, and had come to the reluctant conclusion that, if he kept Sherlock on the case and they didn't find the murderer, it was more than possible he might lose his job over this very point—but if he took Sherlock off the case and couldn't find the murderer within the next twenty-four hours, which didn't seem at all likely, he'd lose his job anyway, and the murderer would still be at large. Keeping the world's only, if also most annoying, genius consulting detective on seemed like the best of the almost equally grim alternatives.

"The fact that Sherlock knew Trevor a decade ago is really irrelevant, Donovan."

"It isn't, sir!" Anderson insisted. "Don't you remember? The housekeeper said the men had quarreled over the picture. That little carpenter's apprentice,"—he almost said "that _hot_ little carpenter's apprentice," but Sally's grim expression made him think better of it—"told us they were arguing over another bloke, and Lance said Trevor had always wanted somebody else more. It all adds up: who else could they have been talking about except _him?_ "

Greg glowered at his subordinate.

"Almost anybody? Just because Lance and Trevor argued over the portrait doesn't mean Trevor was in love with . . ." He hesitated for a moment; the phrase that was on the tip of his tongue-"in love with Sherlock"—seemed just too strange to use. "With the subject of it _now._ Or that Sherlock was . . ."—damn it, this thought was stranger still—"in any way involved with him. In any case, it's ancient history. They hadn't seen each other for the past ten years."

"That's what the Fr—" Sally bit the word off just in time. "That's what _Sherlock_ said. Why should we believe him?"

"I've never known him lie about a case."

Sally just restrained herself from rolling her eyes. Phil didn't manage it, but the D.I. was looking at her and didn't see him, which was just as well for everyone.

"Maybe he's never had a reason to before," Sally said, trying to keep her voice even.

Greg stopped abruptly and looked at her in disbelief.

"What are you suggesting—that _Sherlock_ might be our killer?"

"Why not?"

"For god's sake—what would his motive be?"

Sally pulled herself up to the tallest height she could manage, and looked her boss squarely in the eye.

"Isn't it obvious, sir? He's more or less admitted he and Trevor weren't on good terms anymore. If they were lovers once and Trevor broke it off, and then they ran into each other recently, who knows what that could have triggered? The Freak's a _psychopath_! He doesn't need the kind of motive an ordinary person would."

"Enough of this," Greg snapped. "How many times do I have to tell you Sherlock's not a freak, he's not a psychopath, and you need to stop telling the world he is! The way you go on, he could bloody well sue us if he wanted to."

"He says it himself."

"He calls himself a _sociopath,_ not a _psychopath_."

"It's the same thing."

"It really isn't. You need to go back to your Crim. Psych. notes and bone up on your basic definitions again, Donovan. Then you might finally get a grip on the fact that not only is Sherlock Holmes not a psychopath, he's really not a sociopath, either, no matter what he says."

"He's _withholding evidence,_ sir!"

Greg's shoulders sagged. He rubbed a hand over his face, feeling suddenly old and tired.

"He is? What evidence?"

"Something he found under the bushes earlier, before we went to the cottage."

"What was it?"

"I don't know! He wouldn't show it to me!"

Greg sighed.

"I'll talk to him," he said, wearily. "But Donovan, calm down, get off Sherlock's back, and keep your nose out of this one. The reasons for keeping Sherlock on this case absolutely outweigh any reason I've seen so far for taking him off it—not least the fact that Downing Street and M.I.5 have both told the Commissioner they want him on it."

"Did they know about his involvement with Trevor when they made that request, sir?"

"Probably," Greg said, heavily. "Knowing his older brother, I'd think very probably indeed."

They were buzzed in at the gate. Halfway to the house, they heard it open again behind them. Moments later, a sleek, grey Audi sped past them up the drive and stopped by the front door.

When Greg saw the man who got out of it, he broke into a run.

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"What the hell?" the tall, dark-haired man shouted as he got out of the Audi and saw the policewoman by the front door. "What's going on?"

She hurried towards him, but Lestrade got there first.

"Lance," he panted, breathless from running. "I've been trying to reach you all day. Where the _hell_ have you been?"

Gabriel Lance's face paled.

"Ah, Lestrade," he said. "I, um, er—I didn't know you'd been trying to call. I must have had the ring tone turned off. And my battery's run down; I forgot to charge it last night. But I was going to call you as soon as I got into the house. It's a little awkward, but—well, it's about those pictures." He saw Greg make a small movement, and hurried on before the detective could speak. "You see, when I reported the theft, I hadn't been able to reach Victor to tell him about it. I'd tried to, but he was in meetings all yesterday, and couldn't return my calls. And I couldn't reach him last night, either."

"You couldn't?" Greg felt a surge of excitement. Either the man was lying, or Trevor really had been unavailable the night before. That could be important—if it was true. But. . . .

"No, I couldn't," Lance said, eagerly. "I had business in the city, so I wasn't down here. Victor must have gone straight to bed after he got home and didn't hear the phone ring. I tried again this morning, but I couldn't reach him then, either."

Greg's face was expressionless. He could tell that Lance was trying to keep his tone unruffled and easy, but it was taking an effort. The man was nervous.

"But I finally managed to get through to him—just before my battery died—and told him about the theft, and—well, I'm afraid it's all been a ridiculous mistake. The pictures haven't been stolen at all; Victor has them here. Apparently he got tired of them in our London house, so he brought them down here, just the other day, and put them into storage. I came straight down here from work that day in my own car, and he never mentioned it, so I had no idea. And then when I drove back to London two days ago and found them missing, and the window open—well, I'm afraid I just assumed that they'd been stolen. I do apologize for having taken your time over this. I feel like an absolute fool!"

Greg looked Lance sternly in the eye.

"What time did you say you spoke to Trevor?"

"Oh, I'm not sure, exactly." Lance shifted uneasily. "I, ah—it must have been about an hour ago, I suppose. As I said, I would have called you right away to tell you, but my phone died. I was in Chelmsford, picking up a few things for supper, so I was going to call you as soon as I got to the house. I _am_ sorry about wasting your time like this. . . ."

Greg sighed. The man was lying through his teeth, but he'd have to be an absolute idiot to tell a story like that if he was the murderer: he'd know exactly what time Victor had been shot, and surely everyone these days realized that police could establish a time of death quite accurately under most circumstances?

He cleared his throat.

"Lance," he began.

Lance looked at him defiantly.

"The pictures are here," he said. "I'm terribly sorry about all this, but it was just a mistake, that's all."

"Lance, you'd better come inside. I need to talk to you."

Lance grimaced, then shrugged.

"Let me get my bags, then," he said, and started to move towards the car.

" _Mr. Lance—_ "

Greg's voice was urgent, with a note of something more than command in it. Lance stopped in his tracks and turned slowly around. His eyes went to the detective's.

In spite of Greg's distaste for the man's dishonesty and selfishness, he couldn't help feeling sorry for him. Victor Trevor had been his husband. They'd had their troubles, but if Alice had heard their quarrel properly, Lance had not stopped wanting Trevor to want him.

Lance saw the pity in the policeman's eyes. The colour drained from his face. When he spoke, his voice was shaking.

"It's Vic, isn't it?" he said. "Something's happened to Vic."

Greg had always hated these moments.

"You'd better come inside," he said, "and sit down."

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Sherlock had found John in the kitchen, making tea. Looking him over intently, he was glad to see that the doctor's clothes and hair were only a little damp. He couldn't have spent much time on that bench before getting himself inside out of the rain. Sherlock was actually wetter himself.

John cocked an eye at his friend and took another mug out of the cupboard. When the kettle boiled he made the tea and carried one of the mugs with his right hand to the table, trying not to limp. Sherlock watched him with narrowed eyes, picked up the other mug, and followed. They sat quietly side by side, looking out at the garden while they drank their tea.

Neither of them had felt the need to say anything to the other when, a few minutes later, the constable who had driven Sherlock from the station that morning put her head into the room.

"Could you come?" she said. "Inspector Lestrade needs you in the sitting room right away."

The men put down their mugs and followed her across the hall. Lance was sitting on the edge of a chair, trying to choke back sobs and—apparently oblivious to the box of tissues the constable had put at his elbow—wiping tears and runny snot from his face with the sleeve of his previously immaculate Armani coat.

He looked up when Sherlock came into the room.

"You bastard," he said, with another snuffling sob. "Damn your eyes. This is all your fault!"

" _I knew it!_ " Sally hissed, turning to Lestrade with triumph blazed across her face.

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	15. Chapter 15

Note: I'm sorry I'm taking so long to post these. Thanks for your patience, everyone who's reading this.

Many, _many_ thanks to Fang's Fawn for reading this multiple times and making extremely helpful comments and suggestions. And to someone else, who wants to remain nameless, but without whose invaluable input I couldn't have written this part of the story at all. I just hope I got it right. . . .

Just a reminder that Chapter 14 ended like this:

 _Lance was sitting on the edge of a chair, trying to choke back sobs and—apparently oblivious to the box of tissues the constable had put at his elbow — wiping tears and runny snot from his face with the sleeve of his previously immaculate Armani suit coat._

 _He looked up when Sherlock came into the room._

" _Damn your eyes," he said, with another snuffling sob. "This is all your fault."_

" _I knew it!" Sally hissed, turning to Lestrade with triumph blazed across her face._

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Chapter 15:

Everyone froze. Then, in a kind of balletic unison, they all turned and looked at Sherlock. Everyone except John Watson, who stepped out from behind his friend and moved across the room until he was face to face with Sally, fists clenched belligerently at his side.

"What the hell kind of copper are you, anyway?" he said angrily, looking up into her startled eyes. "Sherlock couldn't possibly have had anything to do with this, and you have no fucking evidence to suggest he did. You've been out to get him since the day I met him, and I'm fed to the goddamned teeth with it!"

Sally took a step back.

"I'm _not!_ " she protested. "I _haven't!_ " And, looking at Lestrade, " _D.I.!_ "

"Okay, cool it, everyone," Greg said, hastily stepping between them. "John, no one's accusing Sherlock of anything; calm down and have a seat. You too, Sherlock. Donovan, if you want to stay on this case, control yourself; if you can't, leave now. This is _positively_ your last warning. I'll be talking to you later."

Sally flushed, but snapped her mouth shut and stayed put.

"Sit down, you two," Greg said to Sherlock and John, who were still standing. They continued to ignore him, John leaning back against one side of the doorframe and Sherlock against the other. Greg shrugged and turned to Lance. "Now," he said, "maybe you could tell us just what you meant there, Mr. Lance?"

Lance didn't answer. He was still staring fixedly at Sherlock, who was returning his gaze steadily, an odd expression in his strange, otherworldly eyes. On anyone else, Greg might have thought of it as understanding — not Sherlock's usual keen grasp of detail and fact, but that other kind of understanding that people sometimes call sympathy. This was so improbable Greg dismissed the thought as soon as it crossed his mind. And it must have been just some trick of the shadows and light where Sherlock was standing, because the next moment the detective flicked his eyes towards the D.I. and they were as emotionless as usual.

"He meant," Sherlock said, coolly, "that Victor wouldn't have died if he and Lance hadn't quarreled over that picture upstairs, because he wouldn't have been alone and unable to call for help when he was shot. Remorse is generally a useless emotion, but many people seem to indulge in it after a death — and find it easier to blame others for the choices they made themselves and now regret."

Greg blinked. Sally and Phil gaped. Lance closed his eyes, his face twisting.

"Mr. Lance?" Greg said, hurriedly. "If you could tell us what you meant?"

Lance opened his eyes.

"Yeah," he said, his voice husky with emotion. "I meant what he said. I — look, I wasn't accusing Holmes. I never saw him before yesterday, except in that bloody portrait. Vic said he hadn't talked to him since they were both at Cambridge, and he wouldn't have lied about that. I just wish to hell I'd left that damn picture hanging where it was, instead of bringing it downstairs for everyone to see."

"Why?" Greg asked, wanting to keep Lance talking, and thinking — as he had with the lady next door — that the best way to find out what he wanted was to let the subject get there in his or her own time. "Why do you wish that?"

Lance scrubbed a hand across his face.

"I liked it, you know," he said, tangentially. "It's a bloody good painting, one of Vic's best. I found it in the boxes of stuff he'd brought from his family house after his father died. Vic said it was that detective everyone was getting so excited about — that they'd been friends for a while at Cambridge, when Vic was doing his graduate work, but they hadn't seen each other since. As I said, it was a really good painting and I liked it, so I hung it upstairs at first, but then a few months ago we were throwing that big party to celebrate Vic's appointment to the Cabinet, and with Holmes so much in the news I thought it would be a terrific talking-piece, so I moved it down to the entranceway, just for that night."

"And?" Greg prodded. "Why did you say you wished you hadn't?"

Lance looked down at his coat sleeve. He seemed to notice its condition for the first time and dug in his pocket for a tissue, apparently still oblivious to the box of them sitting at his elbow. He scrubbed at the sleeve for a minute, while Greg waited for an answer. The scrubbing only made the sleeve look worse.

"Mr. Lance?" Greg said, patiently. "Why did you say you wished you hadn't moved Victor Trevor's portrait of Sherlock Holmes from your upstairs hallway to the entranceway of your Astor Mews house?"

Lance stopped scrubbing at his sleeve and began to pick the tissue apart instead. It flaked over his trousers like dandruff or confetti.

"Mr. Lance?"

" _Because_ ," Lance finally burst out, with a hitch in his voice as he tried to suppress a sob, followed by another attempt to wipe his eyes on his sleeve again, "you could see it a whole lot better there than you could upstairs. And there was that fucking old queen bitch Adam Walkerton, plopping himself in front of it and starting to nudge-nudge-wink-wink at everyone who walked by: 'My, my, Vic must have been head-over-heels for that one, you can see it in every brush-stroke, can't you? I'm surprised Gabe would want to have it on display. Do you think Vic ever did a portrait like that of him? No, well, he wouldn't, would he? They might be cut out along the same general lines, but _that_ boy has a mouth and eyes and bones in his face to die for, and Gabe's really nothing like as remarkable as that, is he? _Poor_ old Gabriel! He's got the name of an archangel, but that boy's got the face of one. And a genius to boot! And Vic such a brilliant man himself; he must miss that terribly. He's probably never got over him!'"

The quiet in the room was absolute, broken only by the sound of Lance's ragged breathing. He dropped his head into his hands.

"And you know the funny thing?" he said, his voice muffled but still audible. "I'd never even thought about it. Art's my whole life, and I looked at that picture every day, and never once wondered if Vic had been in love with him, never asked myself whether he didn't look a bit like me — or I like him — and if that was why —"

His shoulders heaved. He sobbed once, then snuffled grotesquely, as if trying to suck the sound back inside himself. Then he wiped his eyes and nose with his sleeve again. In the frozen silence of the room you could hear the fabric rubbing against his skin.

Sherlock's face had gone rigid, like a deer caught in the headlamps of a lorry. John looked from him to Greg and cleared his throat.

"Do you really have to do this now?" he said in a low voice. "The man's beside himself. He should be with family or friends. He should probably have a lawyer here — yes, I know you've read him his rights, but still. And _we_ shouldn't be here at all." He tipped his head to his left, indicating Sherlock.

Greg bit his lip. John was right; Lance _was_ overwrought. There might be questions afterwards about police having proceeded with the interview, even though it was being witnessed and recorded, and Lance had already been told his rights and had seemed to see no need to take legal advice. If he was as innocent as he seemed, it was unkind to allow him to go on like this, especially in front of Sherlock.

But that was a big "if." All Greg's instincts were telling him that Lance wasn't the murderer — his grief was too convincingly messy, and if he'd been the one to kill Victor Trevor, he'd have to have been an idiot to have tried to get out of that robbery story he'd concocted by claiming to have talked to Trevor hours after the time when he knew the man was dead.

But all Greg's training warned him not to trust his instincts too far. There was a distinct possibility that Lance wasn't what he seemed. He had just revealed that he'd had a very credible motive for murdering Trevor, if he'd believed that Trevor had only chosen him because of his superficial resemblance to another man Trevor had been more deeply in love with.

If Lance _was_ the murderer, he could have used that whole charade he'd cooked up about talking to Trevor that afternoon in the full knowledge that his story would be seen through, could have deliberately chosen to let his attempt at insurance fraud be exposed in the hopes that it would divert attention from his far more serious crime. He could have gambled on the hope that the police would think exactly what Greg had been thinking: that no one would tell such an easily refuted lie if he'd actually known when Trevor had died. . . .

No, Lance couldn't be ruled out completely. He wasn't a stupid man; he could have thought that through. He was artistically inclined, and artistic talents often ran together; he might be a good enough actor to put on this convincing show of grief. If it came to that, the grief might not be a show at all, even if Lance had killed Trevor. In Greg's experience, a certain kind of murder grew from passionate feelings thwarted or betrayed; those feelings didn't vanish into thin air after the lover's death, and to an outsider could be hard to distinguish from the grief of an entirely innocent spouse.

The Met had already classified Trevor's murder as a possible terrorist attack. Finding out if it was one or not was an urgent necessity, and the classification gave Greg a certain amount of latitude he wouldn't ordinarily have in interviewing suspects — even ones he didn't suspect of being terrorists themselves.

And there were still crucial details missing from Lance's story. He'd left the Astor Mews house a little after 7:30 last night. Where had he been since? What had he been doing? Greg needed to get Lance's story quickly — and, no matter how uncomfortable it made everyone, he needed Sherlock to hear what was said if he was going to have any hope of solving this thing in time to please Downing Street. Or preventing another attack.

So, reluctantly, he shook his head.

"Sorry," he told John. "I've got to do this now. And I need Sherlock to hear it."

John frowned. Then he turned and said something to the constable on duty in the hall. She nodded and walked away in the direction of the kitchen, the heels of her sturdy shoes clicking on the floor boards. John turned back and continued to listen, leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded across his chest, his mouth a grim line.

Lance, however, seemed to have pulled himself together a little. He wiped his eyes once more, sat up straighter, and started talking again.

"Vic told me I was being stupid," he said. "That it wasn't what I thought; that it was years ago; that it had nothing to do with us. But I couldn't get it out of my head. So yeah, we fought about it. And that's why I wasn't here when Vic was shot. And I wish to hell I had been. I could have done something — got help, called an ambulance — and maybe he'd still be alive if I had. And at least I'd have been with him. I should have been with him. But it's not Holmes's fault I wasn't, I know that. I just wish to God I'd never seen that picture. Or the others, either — the ones I told you had been stolen, Lestrade. They were in the safe at Astor Mews the whole time."

"We thought as much," Greg said, dryly.

"Yeah. I'm sorry. It was a punk thing to do. And yes, I know you'll charge me for it — lying to the police, attempted fraud, whatever, I don't give a shit. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters anymore, not now Vic's —" His voice wobbled. The constable had come back into the room with a glass of water, which she handed to him now. He nodded his thanks and took a sip, the glass trembling in his hand.

"What made you come down here, anyway?" Greg asked.

"I was bringing the paintings. I was planning to tell you . . . well, what I did tell you: that Vic had brought them down without telling me, that it was all a misunderstanding, and they'd been here all the time."

"But why? You must have known I wasn't going to be keen on rushing to ask for a warrant to search a Minister's safe, not without a whole lot more proof than I had. Why give up on your scheme so easily?"

Lance flinched a little, possibly at the word "scheme."

"I didn't have a choice," he said. "Holmes had caught me out. He knew right away the paintings weren't what I'd said they were and hadn't been stolen. I suppose he'd seen them at the Trevors' place — they came from their country house. Vic's great-grandfather was an amateur artist — a good one, like Vic; he did them as learning copies of the Lewis painting when he was an art student a century ago — and Vic's father left them to Vic because he'd always liked them so much. His mother was Turkish, you know; he's always been interested in that side of his heritage, maybe because he looks a bit Mediterranean himself. Looked, I mean." He took another hasty drink of water and wiped his eyes again. "What was it you wanted me to tell you?" he said, when he'd finished. "I'm sorry — I know I'm wandering terribly here."

"You were saying why you decided to call a halt to your" — Greg didn't have the heart to say "scheme" again — "plans for those Coptic Patriarch pictures. You said Sherlock had figured it out? How did you know that?"

Lance looked surprised.

"Didn't you know? He came back to the house yesterday, after you'd left, and told me he knew what I was trying to do. But he said he wouldn't tell anyone if I stopped doing it and made things right. He was a bit of a prick about it, but really, it was decent of him to bother at all; he could have just turned me in to you. He asked if I realized the kind of trouble I was getting us both into, that if he told you what he knew, the press would be all over the story and everyone would think Vic had been in on it, and he'd lose his job and his reputation and everything he's worked so hard for all these years."

All the eyes in the room shifted to Sherlock again. He'd lost the deer-in-the-headlamps look; his face was impassive.

"And of course I didn't want that at all!" Lance went on. "I was trying to get us _out_ of trouble. We'd got in over our heads financially, with the renovations here and on the London house. I'd thought it was going to be all right at first, but it turned out we — well, _I —_ hadn't kept track of all the little things. Both renos ended up going way over budget, and we couldn't cover it. Not even close."

"So you decided to work an insurance diddle."

"What I really wanted was to sell this house. It seemed the obvious thing to do. We didn't need it, and there was a buyer who'd been trying to get it from us ever since we moved in; he was offering a lot more than we'd paid for it, more than it was worth, even after everything we'd done to it. But Vic loved the place and didn't want to let it go. He'd always wanted something like this. His family had a country home, but his brother got it, of course, along with the title and everything else."

"He knew about your financial problems, but didn't want to sell?"

Lance bit his lip, looking ashamed.

"He didn't know. I . . . didn't want to tell him how badly I'd screwed things up. He was so busy with his new portfolio, and I was supposed to be the one who was good at business, but all I know about is art appraisal, really. I didn't know a thing about tradespeople or contractors, or how to keep this sort of job on budget. It was cowardly of me, I guess, but . . . he's such a brilliant man, and he likes people to be clever, and . . . I just couldn't tell him what a fool I'd been."

"I thought he also had a reputation for honesty," Greg said, rather sharply. He didn't know whether to feel sorry for Lance or just ticked off by him. He'd been dishonest and manipulative, and had caused everyone a great deal of trouble; Greg hadn't slept in what felt like years, and that was largely Lance's fault. He might even have murdered Trevor. And yet Greg didn't really think all this emotion was just an act. Whatever the man had done, he was paying for it now.

"He does," Lance said. "I mean, he _did._ " He squeezed his eyes shut, as if in pain. "He was honest to the core. I just . . . I didn't know what else to do. It was that exhibit at the Tate that made me think of it. Vic's great-grandfather didn't sign his paintings. It would be so easy to pass them off as Lewis's. They were _good_ — every bit as good as Lewis's work. It seemed ridiculous that they weren't worth anything to speak of just because nobody had heard of him."

"And because they were _copies,_ " Sherlock's deep, baritone voice snapped from the doorway. Everyone looked around, startled, even John.

"Yes," Lance admitted, deflating at once. "And because they were copies. It was wrong, I know. But it seemed like a way out, one I didn't think anyone would be too badly hurt by. The leading authority on Lewis's work had a stroke last year and isn't likely to recover from it. I'm the Tate's closest thing to his successor — I've published some articles on Lewis, even though I'm not really that keen on his stuff. If I certified those paintings as originals, who would challenge me? The insurance company wouldn't be out any more than they would have been if they really _were_ originals that were stolen. What difference would it make?"

"But you were going to sell them," Sherlock put in. It was a statement, not a question.

"I wasn't!"

"Of course you were. You could make twice as much that way, and you needed the money. It wasn't just the renovations that had got you in debt; there's your taste in clothes and cars — and a whole lot of other things. There's always a market for the type of art you were going to pass those paintings off as — a known artist, but not _too_ well known. Valuable, but not _too_ valuable. And you'd know how to access that market. You've probably done it before."

"I haven't! I wouldn't! I swear!"

Sherlock just looked at him. Lance seemed to fold under his piercing gaze.

"I — it's not what you're thinking. Okay, I _was_ going to let the paintings go. It was a rotten thing to do. Victor loved them. But he loved this house, too, and I was trying to find a way to keep it for him. I was desperate! And I've never done _anything_ like that before! I wouldn't have had a clue how to do it, if someone hadn't come to _me._ "

"Who was that?" Greg asked.

"I don't really know. He was at that big party we gave. I hadn't invited him; I thought he must have come with one of our guests. He went upstairs to use the loo, and when he came down he asked me about the Coptic Patriarchs. He wanted to know if they were Lewises. And I . . ." His voice trailed off.

"You said yes," Sherlock finished for him.

"Yeah," Lance muttered, hanging his head. "I didn't mean anything by it, not then. I wasn't planning to lie about them. But I'd had quite a few drinks by then — after hearing what Adam Walkerton had been saying, I wasn't too keen on staying sober — and this fellow seemed so impressed by the pictures; it just slipped out. I was ashamed as soon as I said it, but I couldn't take it back, and I figured it was just a harmless bit of bravado. I didn't think anything more about it until he called a week ago and made me a deal I couldn't refuse."

"Why the fake burglary, then? Why not just sell them to him properly?"

"Well, I couldn't just take them down and hand them to him! How would I have explained that to Vic?"

"So you decided to report them as stolen first," Greg said. "And then you could go after the insurance money, too."

Lance nodded, shamefaced. Sherlock narrowed his eyes.

"You'd have had to have them insured _as_ Lewises," he pointed out. "Did you do it then? Or had you done it long before?"

Lance flushed.

" _Then_ ," he said, sounding offended by the suggestion that he might have planned a scheme like this any earlier. "I renew the insurance regularly; I just put them on the list. I'm a dealer; I buy art all the time; the company wouldn't think anything of it. And I didn't have any choice! He wasn't going to _buy_ them! I owed _him_ money; he wanted them as payment for the debt. But there were all those other debts! I had to get hold of some cash, fast; I _had_ to. Trying to get the insurance for them was the only way I could think of."

"I thought," Greg said, "you said you didn't know this man?"

"I didn't — not really. He was just someone I'd run into at the clubs. I didn't even know his full name — everyone just called him Jack."

John shifted against the doorframe, as if the edge of it was starting to dig uncomfortably into his back. His arms tightened against his chest; the line of his mouth grew grimmer.

"And how," Greg asked Lance, "had you managed to get into debt to someone who would make you give him your husband's paintings to forgive it?"

Lance closed his eyes again.

"I . . ."

"Drugs?"

"No. No, of course not. It was gambling. I'd got in over my head, thrown good money after bad, you know how it goes, but I'm not doing it any more, I've stopped, and if I could just have given him what he wanted —"

"Gambling _and_ drugs," Sherlock said, softly.

John made a small, inarticulate sound, as if he had suddenly inhaled a mouthful of dust and was trying not to choke. Then he pushed himself off the doorframe and left the room. They could hear him clearing his throat and coughing a little as he walked quickly across the hall towards the kitchen. Then, faintly — only Sherlock's keen ears picked it up — there was the sound of water running as, presumably, he got himself something to drink.

Sherlock's eyes, which had flicked towards John when he left, moved back to Lance.

"Gambling _and_ drugs," he repeated. "And you haven't stopped. And you are in so far over your head you have no idea where the surface is, or the bottom, or the shore."

Lance looked up at him, his eyes wide. Sherlock met his gaze and held it. Watching them, Greg thought he saw that odd expression pass for a moment across the detective's face again. But it really must have been just a trick of the light.

When Sherlock noticed Lestrade watching, he gave the policeman a withering look. Then he turned on his heel and left the room, flicking his coattails ostentatiously behind him.

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After leaving the sitting room, Sherlock went in search of John and was surprised not to find him in the kitchen making tea, as he'd expected. In spite of the prickling feeling that ran down the back of his neck every time he stood near a window or stepped outside, he went to the French doors and looked out. It was still raining.

All the same, it seemed most likely that John would be out there somewhere, stretching his legs and attempting to fix whatever was wrong with him the way he usually did, with a dose of fresh air. So Sherlock opened the doors and, keeping as careful watch as he had earlier in the day, walked down the garden to the terrace with the benches and the statuary, then skirted the first hedge and strolled around the service buildings behind it.

There was no sign of John. Sherlock took a few moments to double-check the security arrangements: yes, every corner of the back garden seemed to be covered by cameras. But he still couldn't see any in the trees beyond the security fence and the old hedge that must have once marked the border of the garden, before the fence was put in.

He felt a sudden surge of anger. What had the agents been thinking of? Security cameras were expensive, of course, and a ridiculous number of them would have been needed to secure the perimeter of the woods, which ran for miles—at least in the direction Sherlock had come from, and he couldn't see any end to them the other way, either. But why hadn't the experts who had created the security arrangements for Victor set them up anyway? The house was well within range for a sniper with a rifle and scope, its windows had not been replaced with bullet-proof glass, the woods provided good cover, and several of the taller trees had a sightline of sorts to the house and sturdy branches that would make excellent platforms to shoot from. Why hadn't Mycroft—whom Sherlock assumed had ultimately been responsible for the security arrangements here—considered the obvious possibility of a shot from the woods?

But even with cameras and some sort of patrol, Sherlock knew it would have been next to impossible to keep track of everyone who came or went through the woods at night. He wondered if Mycroft had warned Victor that the house couldn't be properly secured, and Victor had insisted on staying there anyway. It would be like him. For all his intellect and high morals, he could be as stubborn and self-righteous about having things his way as . . .

 _As you are,_ the thought completed itself in Sherlock's mind — annoyingly, in both Victor's voice and John's. He shook it away, irritated with himself for having let his thoughts drift back to old memories again. That was a waste of neurons and time.

It didn't matter that the woods would have presented such a tempting opportunity to a sniper with a rifle; Victor hadn't been shot by a rifle. He'd been shot by some sort of .45 bullet, which could only mean a handgun. Otherwise, even Lestrade would have been able to work out a rough approximation of what had happened, if not the finer details. But of course, Lestrade still imagined that the shot had to have been made from inside the house, because the window hadn't been shattered. He really was an idiot. . . . Though Sherlock had to concede that he was usually somewhat less of an idiot than anyone else at Scotland Yard. At least he had the sense to realize how much he needed Sherlock's help.

There was no sign of anyone up a tree with a gun now. Even so, Sherlock looked back over his shoulder several times as he walked back up the garden and around the house, searching for John. He couldn't quite make himself forget that, if he was right in his deductions — and he was never quite as sure of himself as he liked people to believe — then the shooter was still out there somewhere, waiting for a chance to kill him.

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John wasn't in the front garden, either, or on either side of the house. Soaked to the skin and thoroughly frustrated, Sherlock went back inside through the kitchen doors, sure John would by now have settled himself into the kitchen with the kettle and mug of tea, and looking forward to letting him know just how inconvenienced Sherlock had been by having his assistant disappear like that.

But once again, John wasn't in the kitchen drinking tea. Sherlock walked around the ground floor of the house, looking for him. He wasn't in the dining room or the sitting room. (Sherlock glanced into the latter from the hallway, being careful not to be seen and summoned back by Lestrade. The policeman seemed to be discussing where Gabriel Lance should spend the night, since the entire house was being treated as a crime scene, and who he should call to give him emotional support in his bereavement. This was not a conversation Sherlock had any desire to be part of.)

John wasn't in the study, either, or the little office that Sherlock found off that. The office was full of computer equipment, with several chairs in front of the desks but only one lone agent sitting watching the feed from the security cameras on a series of large screens. Sherlock stood in the doorway, taking in the arrangements, until the man growled, "Gerroff, I can't concentrate with you staring down my neck! If you've got any questions take 'em to McBride."

Annoyed, Sherlock went upstairs to continue his search for John. He found him coming out of the big bathroom, looking pale and clammy. The knees of his trousers and the faint odour that drifted out of the room behind him told Sherlock that he'd spent some time bent over a toilet, being sick.

Clearly John was suffering from something more than the effects of a bumpy helicopter ride hours earlier. Sherlock eyed him carefully, and concluded that he had probably come down with some sort of flu. However, he was on his feet now and undoubtedly feeling better than he had before emptying out the contents of his stomach; what he needed now was something interesting to engage his mind with — which happened to fit perfectly with what Sherlock wanted him for right now anyway.

"Come on," Sherlock said. "I've been looking for you everywhere. I want you to see something."

John turned the corners of his mouth up in an attempt at a smile.

"Right," he said. "What? Where?"

"Back here," Sherlock said, striding down the corridor to the master bedroom. John followed, his mouth set now in a tight line. Skirting Anderson's equipment, which was still spread out on the carpet, Sherlock led him across the room to the walk-in wardrobe.

The light, John noticed, came from a sleek, modern, overhead fixture. It was on now, as it had been when he had examined Trevor's body, which was now represented by a taped outline on the floor. The portrait of Sherlock was still leaning against the wall where Sherlock himself had left it.

The detective bent down and picked it up again, turning it over so he was looking at the back of it.

"Yes," he said quietly, with none of the usual triumph in his voice. "That's what happened. That's why he was shot."

"Why?" John asked. "What do you see?"

"Look at this stretcher bar and tell me what _you_ see."

John studied the battered wooden frame over which the canvas of the painting was stretched.

"That gouge," he said, pointing. "It looks more recent than the others."

"Precisely. What would you say had made it?"

"Looks like—"

"Put that _down!_ " Donovan cried from the doorway. "Sir, Sherlock's tampering with the evidence again!"

Lestrade followed her into the room.

"Sherlock," he said. "Donovan tells me you've been withholding evidence from us."

Sherlock looked up.

"Don't be ridic—" he started, then stopped, blinked, and said, "Oh." Propping the portrait against his hip, he reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled something out. "I suppose you mean these, Sally?"

He handed Lestrade two cylindrical pieces of wood, about four inches long and one inch wide, each smooth on one end and jagged on the other.

"They were in the bushes under the sitting-room window. If your people weren't absolute idiots, they'd have found them hours before I did."

Sally and Phil glared at him; Greg ignored the dig. He was looking at the pieces of wood, frowning and turning them over in his hand.

"Dowling," he said, slowly.

"Well-spotted, Lestrade," Sherlock said, the sarcasm unmistakable.

"They were in the bushes under this window?" Greg nodded at one of the two bedroom windows.

"That window is over the sitting-room window, and I said I found them in the bushes under the sitting-room window — so, yes."

"This is where the splinters you found under the desk came from, then."

"Naturally."

"The window," Greg said, and looked again at the beautiful eighteenth-century sash window with its original wavy glass. "Oh, goddammit, the _window!_ It was open, wasn't it?" He strode across to it and tried to raise it. "Umph. It's heavy, old — the lift mechanism doesn't work properly anymore — it won't stay up by itself." He stepped back and let go of the sash; it fell back down with a considerable thump. "Trevor had it propped open at night with _this_ " — shaking the two pieces of the stick. "The shot came from outside. It — wait, though. If the shot came from outside, shouldn't these pieces have been found _inside_ the room, like the splinters? The momentum would all be _forward._ "

"John?" Sherlock turned to his friend. "Explain the circumstances under which a bullet shot from outside might cause a stick like this propping up a window to fall backwards into the flowerbed rather than forwards into the room."

John looked at the stick, then at the window.

"If the bullet hit the side of the stick," he said, slowly, "so it took a bite out but didn't cut the whole way through, the weight of the window would keep the stick in place for a second or two before the thin piece that was left collapsed. At that point, the force would all be downwards, from the weight of the sash pressing down on the stick, and the pieces might go either way — into the room or out of it."

"Precisely," Sherlock said, over-enunciating each syllable.

"But — but —" Anderson spluttered. "The wound in Trevor's chest was made with a .45 bullet. I saw it myself, and _he_ " — obviously meaning John — "said so, too. That means a handgun. You can't possibly get more than a hundred meters with any accuracy from a handgun — two hundred at the absolute outside. It's way more than that from here to the security fence at the back of the lot, and even farther on the sides. So _he_ " — this time clearly meaning Sherlock —"wants us to believe someone got into the garden, evaded all the security cameras and the guards patrolling the property, came as close as a hundred or two hundred meters to the house, and shot out this stick that was propping up the window so the window would fall shut, the prop would fall outside, Trevor would die in a closed room, and no one would know how it was done?"

Sherlock inclined his head towards him.

"You might be an idiot, Anderson," he said, "but on this question you do seem to have grasped the basics of what John was saying. A first for you — congratulations. You've managed to get everything else entirely wrong, though. No, the killer did not get into the property. Therefore, he did not have to evade the security cameras or the guards — at least, not the ones in the most heavily guarded area, the house and garden. And he almost certainly did not _intend_ to shoot out the prop and close the window. That happened accidentally."

"If he didn't get into the property, how could he make the shot?" Anderson actually showed his teeth as he snarled in response.

"It must be _five hundred meters_ to the edge of those woods!" Lestrade's voice registered complete disbelief. "With a handgun? That's _impossible!_ "

"Is it, John?" Sherlock looked at the doctor again.

John didn't answer.

"John?" Sherlock repeated, impatiently. John looked up, frowning.

"Sorry?" he said.

Sherlock's own brows drew together as he studied his friend's face. But he repeated the question, his tone more even this time.

"Do you think it's impossible for a highly-skilled marksman to have made a killing shot with a .45 from the edge of those trees? Say, from under that big oak there?"

John came to the window and looked out.

"That one?"

"Yes."

"That's about five hundred meters."

"Yes."

"With the right gun, and the right ammo, and the right training — I've known men who could do it," John said, slowly.

"You have?" Greg's voice was eager. "Where? In the army?"

John looked in his direction, blinking.

"Army? Yeah."

"How many? Who were they?"

"Two for sure. There could be others."

"Who _were_ they?"

John didn't seem to hear the question. He was still looking in Greg's direction, but his eyes were unfocused, his expression shuttered and remote.

"Who were they, John?" Greg repeated, feeling a sudden surge of anxiety for his friend. "Can you remember their names?"

"John," Sherlock said quietly. John turned towards him. "Names?"

Sherlock's eyes held John's for a long moment, observations and deductions clicking in his mind with their usual inevitability: _Pupils contracted; eyes unfocused and squinting against the light; mouth very tight; breaths coming too fast and shallow. He's in pain. Probably the usual leg and arm, but worse than before. Plus his gut, of course, since he was throwing up a few minutes ago. And a blinding headache, too. The flu? Or. . . ._

And then, with a terrible jolt of fear, _Could Spanish Leather have got something into him I didn't test for?_

And then the realization: _The water glass. I never tested the water glass. It was empty. But the rim. . . ._

"John," he said, and his voice was sharp with barely controlled panic. "We need to get you to a hospital."

He grabbed John's arm. John shook his head. The movement obviously hurt; he closed his eyes and put out a hand to brace himself against the window frame.

" _John?_ " Greg exclaimed, his voice taut with concern.

" _John!_ " Sherlock tightened his grip on John's arm. "The intruder — you might have been poisoned. We need to —"

Greg stiffened. " _Poisoned?_ Intruder? What the _hell?_ "

"— get you to a _hospital!_ "

Sherlock's voice went up so it could be heard over Lestrade's. There was so much alarm in it that Sally's eyes narrowed in suspicion. _That can't be real,_ she thought _. That's just the Freak acting a part — and overacting it, too. Badly. Must want attention. What a narcissist! But that's no surprise — aren't psychopaths always narcissists?_

She turned away in disgust. There was something that had been niggling at her about the room, something she wanted to check again, so she turned back towards the walk-in wardrobe. A light had been on in there this morning. It was on still. How had it got that way? Oh, there was a switch just inside the door—a nice, new, modern one, and the light fixture in the wardrobe — an overhead one — was modern as well. But the other little room, the one off the bathroom, that had been different. . . .

The corner of John's mouth twitched up at Sherlock's anxiety, and for a moment the pain lines around his eyes and mouth lightened.

"No," he said, as Sally disappeared into the hallway. "I'm not poisoned. I'm all right. Or I will be, if I can get something to eat and maybe some sleep. I haven't had a chance to tell you — Harry's flat was broken into last night. The bastards coshed her and her face got smashed up when she fell. She called me when she came to; I took her to the hospital. That was at five bloody a.m., and I hadn't slept much before that — I've just had one bad night too many. Plus, you know, nothing to eat all day except a stale cereal bar and some tea."

Sherlock's grip on John's arm relaxed a little, but only a little.

"Food then," he said, looking grimly at Lestrade. " _Now._ There's a pub in that village we came through, about ten minutes from here. We'll need a car."

"We'll all go," Greg said. "I'm sure everyone could use something to eat at this point. Sorry about your sister, John; I didn't know." He hesitated for a second, studying his friend's face, wondering if he should push this any further. John really did look ill, but Greg needed the information, and the sooner he got it, the better. "Before we go, though, John, d'you think you could just tell me —"

"Moran," John said, his voice a harsh croak. He was still gripping the window frame; his knuckles had gone white against the wood. "John Sebastian Moran. Sniper. Parachute Regiment. Don't know his rank — probably Colonel by now, if the Army didn't kick him out before he got there."

"That's great. Thanks. And the other one? You said you'd known two men who could do it?"

John's eyes moved to Greg's. They were still not quite focused and he was breathing unevenly, but a strange half-smile flickered across his face.

"The second person I know could make that shot?" he said. " _If_ he were in practice, which he isn't. And _if_ he had a scope, and the right kind of gun, and the right ammo, which he doesn't. And _if_ he had a reason to make it, which he _certainly_ doesn't. . . ."

"Yeah?" Greg said, as John stopped to try to get control of his breathing. "Who is it, mate? I really need to know."

"That," John said softly, "would be me."

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	16. Chapter 16

Notes:

Sebastian Moran is such a staple of fanfic that, to avoid confusion, I'd better explain that in this story, which is set before "The Reichenbach Fall," he hasn't yet crossed the radar of either Holmes brother—which is why his name has no effect on Sherlock in the last chapter or here.

I'm even more than usually grateful to Fang's Fawn for her very helpful suggestions for this chapter. I'm also in debt to Ariana DeVere's transcript of "A Study in Pink," which I turned to for the quotation in this chapter, and to wellingtongoose's tumblr blog about John's military and medical careers.

From the end of Chapter 15:

 _John's eyes moved to Greg's. They were still not quite focused and he was breathing unevenly, but a strange half-smile flickered across his face._

" _The second person I know could make that shot?" he said. "_ _ **If**_ _he were in practice, which he isn't. And if he had a scope, and the right kind of gun, and the right ammo, which he doesn't. And if he had a reason to make it, which he_ _ **certainly**_ _doesn't. . . ."_

" _Yeah?" Greg said, as John stopped to try to get control of his breathing. "Who is it mate? I really need to know."_

" _That," John said softly, "would be me."_

Chapter 16:

Greg opened his mouth and closed it again.

"I thought you were RAMC?" he said, feeling stupid, because it didn't make sense, it didn't compute. How would an Army _doctor_ ever learn to shoot like that? But Sherlock was already pulling his friend towards the stairs, and John didn't seem to have heard him.

Sherlock had, though. He looked back over his shoulder, shooting Greg a look so furious it actually stopped the policeman in his tracks. Sherlock didn't say a word; he didn't have to. His knotted brows and blazing eyes screamed, _Not now, you fool! Can't you see John isn't well?_

 _Well, that's a first_ , Greg thought. _Sherlock Holmes, acting like he cares more about another human being than he does about a case? Hope Donovan saw that; it might make her rethink that whole psychopath thing she's always on about._

But Donovan wasn't in the room anymore. She was down the hall in the bathroom, looking at the windowless little space on the other side of the walk-in wardrobe where Victor Trevor had died.

She was right, there was something different about it. It didn't have an overhead light, or any kind of switch for one at all.

000000

Sherlock swept John downstairs and outside, where he pulled a key ring from his pocket and clicked open the doors of Lance's car. John took a deep breath of the blessedly cold, wet air, then looked at him askance.

"First a helicopter, now an Audi?" he said, trying to sound as if he was really quite all right now. "We're _definitely_ going to have to start charging the clients more."

The corner of Sherlock's mouth twitched up as he slid behind the wheel, but he said nothing.

"You realize this is theft, right?" John couldn't keep himself from grunting with pain as he dropped into the passenger seat; his right leg didn't want to bend like that. "And probably disturbing some kind of evidence, if Lance is the murderer. Depriving Lance of his car if he isn't."

That last part didn't make much sense, but John was too tired to try to correct himself. Sherlock snorted.

"He isn't the murderer," he said, putting the car in gear and flooring the pedal. "And Lestrade put him into a taxi half an hour ago, and sent him off to stay with friends."

They took off with a jolt that made John grunt again. He fumbled with his belt, then leant his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.

"The car's just ordinary theft, then, but Lestrade's really going to have your scalp for lifting that key from his crime scene." Talking was an effort, but at least he could breathe a little more easily now. He didn't want Sherlock to start worrying about him again. "I assume you took it from Trevor's pocket, or his desk?"

"Desk," Sherlock said. "The one in the sitting room, not the one upstairs. My scalp will survive. And Victor was always quite willing to lend his cars to friends in need."

John opened his eyes at that, flicking them sideways to try to read his friend's expression. Sherlock's voice sounded as if he were trying to seem amused but not quite managing it; his eyes were grim. The gate opened for them automatically—there must have been some sort of device in the car that signalled its arrival—and Sherlock pulled into the roadway with a spray of gravel and accelerated till the needle hit 80. John closed his eyes again.

"I'll really be all right if we take ten minutes to get there instead of two," he murmured.

 _Not chancing it,_ Sherlock thought, but didn't say out loud.

000000

After Sherlock dragged John off to the pub, Greg put in a call to Scotland Yard to ask for a records search on a John Sebastian Moran, and then had a talk with Ron McBride. Several phone calls back and forth to higher-ups at the Met and M.I. 5 and 6 ended with a decision from on high that the house and grounds no longer required the kind of security presence they had before the murder, and the local police should take over the job of guarding the crime scene. Greg wasn't happy with this arrangement, but couldn't produce a logical argument to justify the expense of keeping The Gables tightly secured when its resident was already dead. "It just feels wrong" was the sort of reasoning that tended to put a halt to future chances for promotion, if it didn't result in immediate demotion or a P45.

When Greg finally made it out the front door with Donovan and Anderson in tow, a very tired constable was waiting for her replacements to show up and take over, while trying to absorb the intricacies of the entrance-gate buzzer and the security-camera system from the surly agent who had snapped at Sherlock earlier.

Lance's Audi was no longer in the drive. Greg wondered if he'd known Sherlock for entirely too long, since its absence barely surprised him. He had no doubt he'd find the car in the parking lot of The Cricketers' Arms in St. Mary's Wold.

Neither Donovan nor Anderson seemed to have noticed that the Audi was missing, and Greg decided it wasn't worth mentioning. He'd have to get the key back from Sherlock, of course, and let the consulting detective know exactly how dim a view Greg took of him not only lifting the key from wherever he'd found it, but also messing about with a car that could conceivably contain significant evidence, if Gabriel Lance turned out to be a more promising suspect than Greg really thought he was. But there was nothing Greg could do about that now, and the last thing he needed was another argument with Sally Donovan or Phil Anderson about taking Sherlock off the case. No matter how frustrating the consulting detective's methods—or lack of them—might be, Greg was certain that their chances of solving the crime were far better working with him than without him.

The one real break they were getting, he thought, as he sat at the wheel of his car waiting for the constable to figure out how to make the front gate open for him, was that the press wasn't lined up in the lane outside. Mycroft Holmes had insisted on keeping Trevor's death out of the news until they knew more about it. Downing Street would have to make an announcement before much longer, but at least for the time being he and his team would be able to focus on their work without the hassle and distraction of a press conference. He hated press conferences—especially when the only answers he had to give boiled down to either "no comment" or "no idea."

"Nice Audi," Anderson said as they drove into the parking lot of The Cricketers' Arms. "Same model as Lance's car, isn't it?"

"That's his plate number," Donovan said, her voice sharp with tension.

"Must have decided to go for a drink," Greg muttered.

Anderson and Donovan looked at him strangely. Of course, they'd seen him put Lance into the taxi.

"Drop it," he said, with a sigh. "I'll deal with him later."

Anderson rolled his eyes. Donovan crossed her arms over her chest and scowled.

Nobody had to ask who he meant.

000000

The Cricketers' Arms owed its success in good part to its ancient, half-timbered building, whose wide brick hearths and leaded windows gave it the kind of almost-too-quaint charm that—together with an excellent menu, and a small number of comfortably done-up bedrooms—drew weekenders out from Chelmsford, Colchester, and even London in droves. On a rainy Monday night, though, the main dining room was empty, and only a few locals were talking and drinking at the bar.

The Yarders found Sherlock and John in the snug, a deep alcove off the bar area, where comfortably upholstered chairs surrounded a huge fireplace. Plates and drinks had been set on a small table between the two men, and their feet were stretched out to the blazing log fire. Sherlock immediately wished he had had the foresight to remove the other chairs from the area, but since he hadn't, Lestrade, Anderson, and Sally Donovan sat down with them. A young waitress came over to take their orders.

"You don't think it's Lance, then?" Anderson asked the D.I., when the waitress had brought their drinks and disappeared again.

Greg glanced over his shoulder at the room behind them, and decided they were sufficiently removed from the other customers and from the bar itself to be able to talk openly about the case.

"Can't be sure yet," he said. "Doesn't seem likely, though."

Sherlock sniffed disdainfully.

"Lance isn't the murderer," he said, earning a glare from Sally and a look of annoyance from Phil Anderson.

"What makes you so sure?" Greg asked. "He wouldn't have the skill to make that shot from the woods, but if he could have got hold of a gun, he could have smuggled it into the grounds and taken the shot from closer in—from the shrubbery in the garden, or even from the house itself. We can't be sure that stick was shot in two from outside. A shot from inside actually makes more sense, given the bits of stick you found in the flower bed. John gave us a way they _could_ have fallen backwards, but it's really more likely the force of the bullet propelled them forwards, isn't it?"

"And he would have got into the house, how? There's no sign on the security tapes of him entering the grounds at any point last night or this morning."

"That's a puzzle," Greg admitted. "But we can't rule it out completely. He's had plenty of opportunity to familiarize himself with the security arrangements; he might have found some hole in them we haven't discovered yet. Or he might have bribed one of the agents to let him in."

"And to edit the security tapes while he was at it? In an hour or two, to a level that withstands forensic analysis— _my_ analysis? Don't be ridiculous. The man spent the day in Chelmsford, shopping for expensive groceries for the make-up meal he was going to cook for Victor."

"How do _you_ know?" Anderson demanded. That was what Lance had said he'd been doing, but Sherlock hadn't been in the room then.

"They're still in his car," Sherlock said, coolly. "The thing reeks of well-aged beef, truffles, and Stilton. The names of the shops are on the bags."

Anderson badly wanted to ask Sherlock what the hell he thought he'd been doing, taking Lance's car without permission. So did Sally. But the look on Lestrade's face reminded them that their boss had said he wanted to deal with that himself, in his own time—which apparently wasn't now.

"He could have been laying down an alibi," Anderson pointed out, his voice sharp with all the things he wasn't letting himself say. "The D.I.'s right; we can't rule him out. He's got all the motive in the world: he'd gone through their money, got into debt, was in the middle of committing a fraud. Trevor sounds like the last man in the world who'd put up with that. If he'd found out, he might have threatened to expose him. Or cut him off and leave him without any funds at all. If Lance was desperate, he might have thought the value in the houses alone would be worth killing for."

"Lance didn't kill Victor," Sherlock said again, disdain dripping from every syllable. "Whoever did it had to have been in regular practice with an illegal handgun. Where and how would a London art dealer get that? I saw his house and his hands. He wasn't a gun user. And even if he'd somehow got hold of a gun recently, he couldn't have had the skill to make that shot from the edge of the woods."

"Why are you so sure it had to have been made from the woods?" Greg asked.

"Because," Sherlock said, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers under his chin, "if it had been made from closer in, the shooter would have been able to see what he was shooting at more clearly."

Sally snorted. "He saw Trevor clearly enough."

Sherlock closed his eyes and said nothing. Sally could barely contain her irritation. But the server arrived then with their food, so for a while they all stopped talking about the case and applied themselves to eating their really excellent meals.

All except John and Sherlock. Greg, watching them as he ate, was not surprised that Sherlock didn't seem to have eaten anything. He rarely did on a case. John, on the other hand, did surprise him. He'd ordered the same thing Greg was eating—a truly delicious steak-and-kidney pie—but had barely touched it. Like Sherlock, he was leaning back in his wing chair with his eyes closed. Unlike Sherlock, he looked profoundly tired, and he was nursing a glass of whisky.

Watching his lined face, Greg found himself thinking about what John had said about being able to make that extraordinary shot from the woods himself.

How had John ever learned to shoot like that? He'd been in the army, sure, but he'd been a _doctor._ Some people had a natural talent for marksmanship, and maybe John was one of them, but a good eye alone wouldn't let you make a killing shot from 500 meters with a handgun. Snipers were taught to shoot like that, if they had the eye to begin with. But John couldn't have trained as a sniper. It would be in conflict with his Hippocratic oath, surely.

Greg wondered if he could have joined the army before he'd enrolled in med school. But John wasn't old enough for that—he'd been 37 at his last birthday. He'd left the army before making Major. He wouldn't have had time to do a stint in the army first and then go back to university and become a doctor, let alone the surgeon Greg knew he'd been.

It was all a bit of a mystery. Greg had never really understood why John hadn't stayed on in the Army as a G.P.—he had to have qualified as a G.P. as well as a surgeon, since he practiced as one at that clinic he worked at, whenever he wasn't running around London chasing murderers with Sherlock.

Perhaps he hadn't wanted to stay on. People didn't always make good decisions in the immediate aftermath of traumatic injuries. Greg had seen it happen with colleagues at the Met, men—and women, too—who couldn't stomach the thought of desk work after the excitement of active duty, even though leaving the force meant giving up a secure job with good benefits.

But when the hell had John had the time or the opportunity to do sniper's training? Let alone to become as good at it as that?

If anybody else had said he could do that, Greg might not have believed them. But he'd never known John to lie or to boast. If John said he could do it, it must be true. But if it _was_ true—then, Greg realized with a sigh, he was probably looking at the man who'd killed Jefferson Hope.

Well. That didn't really shock him, did it? It wasn't as if he hadn't considered the possibility before. Sherlock's own comments after the shooting had certainly suggested it: " _Kill shot over that distance from that kind of a weapon – that's a crack shot you're looking for, but not just a marksman; a fighter. His hands couldn't have shaken at all, so clearly he's acclimatised to violence. He didn't fire until I was in immediate danger, though, so strong moral principle. You're looking for a man probably with a history of military service . . ._ " Greg had always ruled John out, though, on the grounds that an Army doctor couldn't possibly have the sharp-shooter's skill to have made that extraordinary shot through two windows.

He felt a heavy weight settle on his chest now. It wasn't that he thought he should charge John with Hope's murder. He didn't have any evidence, for one thing, and he was quite certain he would never be able to find any. The gun would be at the bottom of the Thames, any hint of its connection to John wiped, washed, or filed off before it ever went in—Sherlock would have made sure of that, if John hadn't.

And it didn't make Greg think any less of John to think he'd killed Hope. The man had been truly evil—a killer who targeted innocent people, men and women and even a teenaged boy he'd never met before, who'd done nothing to him. Greg had decided long ago that whoever had shot him had done society a favour—and had almost certainly saved Sherlock's life that night.

But if John had killed Hope, then Greg was going to have to consider the possibility that he'd killed Victor Trevor as well. That seemed preposterous, especially when John himself had drawn attention to his ability to make the shot. Still, it wasn't impossible he'd admitted that much because he knew there was someone out there somewhere who'd be able to attest to his ability with a gun, if Greg started looking into it, and he thought Greg would be less suspicious if he'd heard it from John himself first. Or he might have admitted it out of a sense of honour, because he knew Greg's job was on the line in this investigation, and he wasn't willing to lie to protect himself if doing that would hurt a friend. Greg really had no trouble imagining John Watson doing that.

What his motive could have been, Greg had no idea, and yet Sherlock had once been close friends with Trevor—possibly even something more than friends, if that portrait and Lance's evident jealousy were anything to go on. Donovan and Anderson were right; that sort of connection opened up all sorts of possibilities. Revenge for some past hurt. Jealousy, even, if Anderson was right about other things, too, and John and Sherlock really were a couple—an idea Greg had always found ludicrous, but tonight, tired out and troubled by realizing how much he'd missed about John, he was ready at least to consider the possibility that he'd been as wrong about that as he'd been about his friend's abilities with a gun.

Of course, John had an alibi—he'd been woken by his sister at 5:00 a.m. and had taken her to the hospital. Now that Greg was thinking about it, though, it seemed odd that John should have an alibi for that particular day and that particular block of time—for pretty much the exact window in which the shot must have been fired. He should have been sound asleep in his bed in Baker Street, with no way of proving where he was at all.

Greg would have to check out John's story about last night. And it _would_ check out, of course. John was far too intelligent and too knowledgeable about both medical and police procedures to think he'd be able to get away with making the whole story up. If he said they'd got to A&E or Urgent Care or wherever he'd taken her by 6:30 or 7:00 a.m., then the records would show that they'd got there by 6:30 or 7:00 a.m.

But the critical window of time was earlier. Harry would undoubtedly back up whatever her brother said. If she was covering for him, John could have travelled down to The Gables at any time during the night, hidden himself in the woods, and fired the shot that killed Victor. If the old lady really had heard the shot, and if her daughter was right about the time it would have taken her to get to the field to pick her mugwort, then it must have happened around 5:30. That was on the outside edge of the window John had suggested, when he'd put the time of death between 5:30 and 6:30 and said it might have taken Trevor as much as an hour to bleed out, but it was still within the realm of possibility.

Of course, they only had John's word for those times. If he was covering for himself . . . . Getting the autopsy results suddenly seemed a lot more urgent than it had an hour ago.

But if John _had_ shot Victor Trevor at 5:30 that morning, would he have had time to get back to London and take his sister to A &E? It all depended on when the hospital said they'd got there. Liverpool Street was a little over half an hour by train from Chelmsford, but you had to add on another half hour by car from The Gables, and travel time from the train station to whichever emergency service they'd gone to—presumably one close to Harry Watson's flat, wherever that was. How could John have done that? A taxi would be far too traceable. He could have rented a car, perhaps, but Greg seemed to remember that John didn't drive. But his sister might—who was to say she'd stayed behind? And Sherlock certainly did.

John opened his eyes and saw Greg looking at him.

"Sorry," he said. "Did I nod off? Hope I wasn't snoring or anything."

Greg smiled, a little grimly, and shook his head. He gave his thoughts a shake, too. His suspicions really were preposterous. Was he actually imagining that John had somehow arranged for his sister's nose to be broken, to give him a cover story? _John?_ The idea was ridiculous.

And if Greg factored Sherlock into all this, the story became wilder still. It was impossible to imagine Sherlock Holmes plotting to avenge himself on a former friend, or even lover. The thirst for vengeance was irrational, emotional. Greg was sure that Sherlock _had_ emotions, no matter how little he showed them. But he was the last person Greg could imagine allowing himself to indulge in something as passionate and stupid as revenge.

It was just as crazy to think of John doing something like that, even for Sherlock. No, if John Watson had shot Victor Trevor, he would have done it for only one reason: because he'd believed Trevor to pose an immediate threat to Sherlock's safety. And that seemed as absurd as everything else Greg had been wasting time wondering about, since by all accounts Victor Trevor had been an unusually good man. Even _Sherlock_ had thought so.

Although perhaps the operative word in all this was "believed." What if John had _thought_ Trevor was a threat to Sherlock, even though he wasn't? Could Sherlock have said something John had misinterpreted? Or—an even more unsettling thought—could someone have manipulated John into thinking that? Someone who wanted Trevor dead—perhaps for the sake of disrupting the Olympics, perhaps for some other reason—and who knew John's abilities and how he would react to a threat to his friend?

Maybe his alibi had been an accidental one. Maybe Harry's flat _had_ been broken into, maybe she _had_ been coshed and broken her nose and called her brother for help. She'd have called on his mobile. He could still have been down here in Essex shooting Trevor and planning on getting back to London before daybreak, with no one the wiser. Maybe he really could drive, and just preferred not to most of the time. . . .

 _Stop it,_ Greg told himself. _This is ridiculous. It couldn't be John._ But he wasn't as sure as he wanted to be that that was true.

John stretched and got to his feet.

"Need a slash," he said, to no one in particular, and headed in the direction of the loos. He still looked unwell, Greg thought, and he was limping badly. Greg wondered if John's obvious physical distress could be an indication that he'd murdered a man a few hours ago. The psychological and the physical were often linked. . . .

Hating the way his profession made him think, he shook himself mentally again and checked his phone. There was a message from the Yard. He scanned it eagerly at first, then with increasing irritation.

" _Nothing!_ " he muttered, clicking the mobile off and shoving it back in his pocket.

Donovan and Anderson eyed him curiously.

"Nothing about Moran," he elaborated. "At least, nothing suspicious. He was a first-rate sharpshooter with the Parachute Regiment, as John said, but he's in his late sixties now and has been retired for some time. Seems to have had an unblemished service record—he made Colonel before his retirement—and an equally clean civilian one. Well-connected family; father was a judge; went to school with the Prince of Wales; belongs to several posh clubs. Not exactly the sort of bloke you'd expect to find lurking in the woods before dawn on a miserable wet night down here in Essex, waiting to shoot the Minister for Culture, Media, Sport, and the Olympics."

"You could bring him in for questioning," Anderson suggested. "Find out where he was last night, whether he's got an alibi for the time of the shooting."

"Old friend of HRH?" Greg said, heavily. "The Commissioner would have my head if I did that without some damned good evidence to justify it. And 'I heard he's good with a gun' _isn't_ evidence, Anderson, as you should bloody well know."

That applied to John too, he reminded himself—Jefferson Hope or no. It was a comforting thought.

They talked about the other possible suspects for a while. There were the gardeners, who hadn't been interviewed yet, but they only came in once a week during the later part of the spring and summer, and on an as-needed basis the rest of the year; according to the housekeeper they hadn't been in for three weeks and weren't expected until Friday. They never came inside, and were searched by security whenever they entered the property. Greg was planning to see them tomorrow, but he wasn't expecting to find anything suspicious when he did.

He had someone at the Yard checking out the backgrounds of the carpenters and the housekeeper, but he felt just as certain that nothing out of the ordinary would turn up there. The security agents had been double- and triple-checked, since they worked for the Met's security division; Greg had requested another look at them, but doubted it would turn up anything that hadn't been seen before.

And then, of course, there was the "unknown terrorist." That was at once the most likely and the most worrying possibility. No one had claimed responsibility yet, but Al-Qaeda probably would once the story hit the news—whether they'd had anything to do with it or not. Downing Street was hoping to head that off by being able to name the real killer when they released the news of Trevor's death. And Greg hadn't found a shred of evidence that pointed in any specific direction at all.

John stopped at the bar on his way back from the loo. When he sat down again, he was cradling another whisky. He looked exhausted. Sherlock continued to sit with his eyes closed and his fingers steepled under his chin. Sally was nursing her second pint and staring into the fire, frowning. Even Anderson had gone quiet. Like almost everyone else, he seemed to be watching the flames, but from time to time he glanced over at Sally. Then he would bite his lip and go back to studying the burning logs.

Greg looked at his watch. 9:30. The sun had set a couple of hours ago. He lived on the other side of London; so did Donovan and Anderson. And he wanted to get an early start tomorrow.

"We'll stay here tonight," he announced. "If that's all right with you two."

"Sure," Phil said. Sally nodded in agreement. They'd both brought the essentials with them. It was standard procedure whenever they were called out of London, even when the crime scene was only an hour away.

Greg got up and walked over to the desk in the entranceway to make the arrangements with the host.

"What's wrong, Sally?" Anderson asked—quietly, for him.

"Nothing." She didn't look up, but continued to stare into the fire, frowning.

" _Something_. Come on, you can tell me. What's bugging you?"

"It's nothing to do with the case."

"That's all right. We're done for the night. Tell Uncle Phil what the matter is."

She made a face at that, but put her glass down and turned in his direction.

"If you must know, it's that little room. Well, cupboard, really—the one behind the walk-in wardrobe. I know it doesn't have anything to do with Trevor's death. It couldn't. But there's something _wrong_ about it."

"The brick wall?"

"That, for sure. Who would use brick _inside_ a house, to divide a room—an upstairs room? It can't be supporting anything, and it isn't well supported; the weight's already making the floor sag a bit."

"DIYers do all kinds of stupid things."

"It's not just that. Those bolts—there's one on that door, too, just like the one on the wardrobe where the body was."

"Yeah, you mentioned that before. It's a bit queer, I guess, but why should it matter?"

"Because there's no light in the bathroom cupboard."

"Lots of cupboards don't have lights."

"There's never _been_ a light. There's no switch. No fixture, no dangling wires, no plate covering a place where a light would have been. There isn't even a power socket in the wall anywhere!"

"Probably not. It's just a cupboard in an old house. What does it matter _,_ Sally?"

"For God's sake, Phil! Because it wasn't always a cupboard. It's been a _room._ "

"Before the wall was built, you mean? There's an overhead light in the wardrobe, isn't there? I'll bet there was one bung in the middle of the ceiling of the old room before they divided it up, and they used the wiring for the wardrobe but didn't bother to put a fixture in the bathroom cupboard, too."

"I'm not talking about before the wall was built. I'm talking about _afterwards._ "

"I don't get it," Phil admitted, with uncharacteristic honesty.

"Sally means,"—Sherlock's voice, coming after such a long silence, made them both startle—"that after the brick wall was put in, the two smaller spaces were used as rooms people spent time in."

"But they don't have any windows," Phil objected.

"And at least one of them had no electric light," Sherlock agreed.

"Why would anyone want to sleep in a place like that? Why can't they just have been cupboards?"

"Because," Sherlock sounded thoroughly bored, "of the bolts. The only reason to put a bolt on a door is, as Sally pointed out earlier, to keep someone on the other side of it. Therefore, someone must have been kept on the other side of these. Two someones, presumably, since there are two spaces and two bolts."

John, who had been sitting silently drinking his whisky, tightened his hand around his glass as Sherlock was speaking, his mouth thinning out to a fine, angry line. Sally picked her drink up again and glowered down at it, feeling every bit as angry as John looked. Sherlock had only said what she'd been thinking, but to hear something so awful spoken out loud with so little feeling infuriated her.

For a moment, even Phil looked shocked. Then, as if realizing he'd let his guard down, he tightened his slackened jaw and tried to grin.

"Told you it'd be kinky sex games," he said to Sally, giving her foot a nudge with his. "Can't say it sounds like _my_ idea of fun. What kind of wuss would let himself be locked up in the dark, anyway?" Sally glared at him and kicked his foot away.

"Get _off_ me, you great pillock," she snapped. Phil looked as surprised and hurt as if he'd given her a kitten and she'd kicked that.

"Presumably," Sherlock said coolly, tilting his head in Phil's direction, "the 'wusses' were the children we had to hear so much about this afternoon—that tedious little boyhood saint and martyr, and his sister."

"Oh." Phil looked away, embarrassed now. He hadn't thought of that.

Sally had, though. She glared at Sherlock.

"You don't care at all, do you?" she hissed. "You think you're so clever, because you can put all the pieces of a puzzle together like _that,_ but it doesn't bother you a bit to think of that man beating those kids and locking them up in the dark? You're not _human_."

Sherlock drew his brows together and stared back at her, his strange eyes cool and unreadable, but said nothing. John half-rose, then sat down again. He was clenching and unclenching one of his hands, as if he was trying to rein in the urge to stand up again and hit someone—presumably Sally. Phil glanced nervously over his shoulder, wondering if their boss had heard what Sally had said and would turf her out for it the way he'd threatened to, but Lestrade was still standing at the front desk, talking to the owner of the inn.

"That old lady said it had been going on a long time," Sally went on, furiously. "But that doesn't matter to you, does it? You don't give a shit about anybody or anything. And you know why you don't? Because you're a fucking _psychopath,_ Freak! You keep eyeballs in your microwave, for God's sake; I've heard you beat corpses to see whether they bruise or not; you run out to look at every murdered body that turns up, because you _like_ them, because people getting hurt and killed _turns you on._ I saw you stroking that dog while the old woman was talking today! You were really getting off on the thought of that kid being torn apart by those dogs, weren't you? I bet you'd have loved to see that. You'd turn it into some kind of 'scientific experiment'—'let's see how long it takes a dog to chew off a boy's leg,' or maybe, 'how long does it take a child to bleed to death from dog bites?' And you'd just sit there, watching the kid trying to get away, listening while he cried and screamed for help—"

"Jesus fucking _Christ!_ " John stood up and slammed his glass down on the table beside him. He missed the table top and caught the tumbler hard across its edge; the glass shattered. John stood for a moment looking from Sally to Sherlock and back again, breathing hard, as if he'd been running a race. Then he looked down at the broken glass in his hand. Glass and hand were both smeared with blood. He set the broken tumbler down and walked away, brushing past Greg and the startled host as he made his way to the door.

Sherlock had already unfolded himself from his chair. He grabbed his serviette and John's and caught up with John in three long strides. They stood together in the entryway for a moment, John's good hand on the old iron doorknob, Sherlock's flat on the door over his head, as if John wanted to open it and Sherlock was keeping it shut.

The men's eyes met. Nothing was said, but after a moment Sherlock took his hand away. There was a rush of cold, wet air as the door opened. It closed behind Sherlock as he followed John outside.

"What was that all about?" Greg asked, returning to the snug. He had just assured the innkeeper that Sherlock and John would come back to pay their bill, but he'd take care of it if they didn't.

"Dunno," Anderson muttered. "Watson just went off like a rocket. Must have had too much to drink."

Sally's cheeks were blazing, but she kept her eyes on the fire and didn't contradict him.

 _Yeah,_ Greg thought, wearily. _Donovan had nothing to do with that. Right._ But he hadn't heard the exchange, so there wasn't much he could say except, "They're getting the rooms ready. Anyone want another drink before we go up?"

Everyone did. Greg ordered another round. The host came over to clear the broken glass away and put another log on the fire, and the waitress came back to ask if anyone would like dessert.

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Outside the inn, Sherlock popped his collar against the rain and watched John walk angrily away into the night. In spite of the thick wool of the Belstaff, he felt cold.

It was happening again. The thing that had been worrying him for the past fortnight—that had been brought even more urgently to the surface of his thought by the events of the past two days, with their painful reminders of that other friendship and the way it had ended—was happening, just as he had known it might. Sally Donovan's tirade could hardly have failed to remind John of what Sherlock had done in that Baskerville lab. There had been no way to misinterpret the look John had given him just now, as he was trying to leave and Sherlock was trying to stop him: _Keep away from me._ _I can't stand the sight of you._

Sherlock couldn't even have the satisfaction of blaming Sally for the debacle. She'd been going after him; she hadn't known she'd be hitting such a sore spot with John. And it wouldn't have _been_ a sore spot if he, Sherlock, had done things differently two weeks ago.

If he'd just realized that the drug had been in the gas, not the sugar. . . . If he'd been clever enough to work that out, he wouldn't have had to set up that experiment on John at all. Mycroft was right; he really was almost as stupid as everyone else at times. Stupid and childish, which was why he was standing here now, feeling as bereft as he had as a small boy when his dog died.

Victor had been right: Sherlock really wasn't fit for the company of other people. He wasn't good for them. Sally had been wrong in most of what she'd said. He didn't think he would ever do what she'd suggested; he certainly wouldn't derive any pleasure from watching a child suffer—or anyone else. Not _real_ suffering, the physical kind. But he couldn't deny that he'd been willing to watch John crawl in terror through that lab. He'd been willing to listen to John's agonized pleas for help, and he had felt a good deal of satisfaction in hearing them.

Some—maybe most—of that had been with himself for identifying (or thinking he'd identified) the source of the hallucination, and for being clever enough to find a way (or thinking he'd found a way) to prove it. But he'd also been quite pleased to see John suffer the same humiliating fear that he had.

The brave war hero had whimpered and begged for help. That was worse than what Sherlock had done, and proved quite neatly that Sherlock still deserved the respect John paid him by following him and letting him take the lead. After his own nauseating display of weakness in the Cross Keys Inn, there had been a distinct satisfaction in evening the tables with John in the lab—though it hadn't been John's fault that Sherlock had been afraid. He'd still, to Sherlock's intense mortification, _seen_ him afraid. And so Sherlock had felt some vindication in seeing John afraid, too.

But the satisfaction had been short-lived. Sherlock had been careful not to reveal the whole of what he'd done to John, but he'd known for some time—for the past two weeks, in fact—that John must have guessed how coldly and with what detachment, even enjoyment, Sherlock had watched his one true friend's distress.

He'd known John was angry about it. And he'd been increasingly disturbed by the extent to which the experiment had affected John. The loss of sleep, the nightmares, the psychosomatic pain—those weren't things Sherlock could make himself ignore. He hadn't been sure how long John himself would be able to go on ignoring the connection between what he was suffering and what Sherlock had done, how long John would still be willing to consider himself Sherlock's friend.

Was it all over now? He didn't know. The frightened, little-boy part of him that he was usually able to keep under restraint in a very small room of his mind palace thought it probably was: John had looked very angry indeed when he'd walked away.

The rest of Sherlock's mind, though, was calculating the likelihood that John would simply walk his anger off. He had taken the paper napkins to wrap around his hand; there was the hint of a concession in that. He clearly wanted to be alone now, but he would have to come back to the inn at some point. And once there, he might still be willing to make some sort of rapprochement with Sherlock.

He had, after all, no way of getting back to London on his own.

So, in spite of the rain, Sherlock leaned against the wall beside the door and waited.

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	17. Chapter 17

Warning: Some of the language in this chapter, even more than in the last, is highly offensive. I want to say that I've thought long and hard about what words to use here: I didn't want to make reading this story unnecessarily unpleasant for anyone, or contribute to the coarsening of thought or daily conversation around us in any way. But I couldn't find any other words that seemed right for the situation. I hope none of my readers will be upset by my decision to use the ones I did, and that you'll agree with me that, under the circumstances, I couldn't have had John say anything else.

My thanks are, as always, due to Fang's Fawn, for her very helpful encouragement and comments on this chapter.

Chapter 17:

The waitress had just cleared the remains of Greg's toffee pudding away when the inn's door opened with another blast of cold air. John came in, with Sherlock—who seemed to be holding the door—behind him. Sherlock spoke for a minute to the host. Then he turned and said something to John, who looked annoyed and snapped back some reply that seemed to set the host apologizing. A gesture towards the others in the snug told Greg what he must be saying: Greg had already booked three of the inn's four rooms for his team, so there was only one left.

John finally seemed to give in. The host handed Sherlock a key, and Sherlock strode up the stairs. John paused for a moment, then followed, taking each step slowly and leaning heavily on the rail with his good hand. His left was wrapped in the serviettes Sherlock had taken with him from the table.

"What rooms are we in?" Anderson asked. Greg told him the numbers. Anderson flicked his phone on and googled, "The Cricketers' Arms, St. Mary's Wold." He snickered when he saw the results.

"They won't be able to keep up their pretense of being 'just friends' after this," he said. "There's only one other room. And it's just got one bed."

"Oh, for God's sake," Sally snapped. "You've never shared a bed at an inn with a mate when you had to?"

"You've shared with _me,_ " Greg pointed out. "On that case up in Yorkshire, remember?"

Which had the effect of shutting Anderson up for a while, and letting Greg enjoy his drink in peace.

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Sally watched as John laboured up the stairs. He'd been angry at her for saying those things about Sherlock, but she thought some of his anger had also been directed _at_ Sherlock—probably for the same reasons she'd been angry with him. And yet there he was, trotting after the man like a dog after its master—though it was costing him visible effort to pull himself up those stairs.

What did he _see_ in the man? Phil thought they were lovers. Maybe he was right, though she found it hard to imagine. Lestrade had always scoffed at the idea. "John?" he'd said more than once. "He likes _birds,_ Anderson. Really hot _birds._ " Phil had brushed that aside, but Sally thought the D.I. was probably right. She'd seen the way John looked at the really pretty women he met on cases they'd worked on together, or at the Yard.

Another time, when they were all unwinding after a nasty case, and Lestrade had had a few more than he usually allowed himself, he'd said something else, too: "John and Sherlock, they're just friends. But they're really _good_ friends. The best."

Phil, who'd been a couple of sheets to the wind already, had laughed at that.

"Jesus, who'd want _Sherlock_ as a friend? I mean, he's bloody brilliant, no question, but you'd have to be barking to want to spend five minutes with him, let alone _live_ with him. It's gotta be sex. Short bloke with no real job to speak of, and the Freak—they're desperate for it and they can't find anyone else who'll give it to 'em."

The D.I. had stared at him over his glass until even Phil had started to squirm.

"Anderson," Lestrade had said, after he'd reduced the man to a jelly, "you're so fixated on sex you can't see what's staring you in the face, can you?"

"What's that?" Phil squeaked, then heard himself and lowered his voice and added "sir," like the hopeless little boot-licker he was. (Sally was not at all happy with Phil Anderson anymore. He was talking about leaving his wife for her, which had set her running for the hills.)

" _That_ ," the D.I. had said, "is that those two aren't about sex at all. They're about something much bigger than that."

Phil stifled a snort—in his world, nothing was bigger than sex, except possibly his idea of the tool he did it with—but Sally had leaned in so she could hear better, because the D.I. was her boss and it was important to know what he was thinking, even if she didn't always agree with him.

"Sherlock and John," Lestrade went on, his voice a bit fuzzy round the edges, "they're the kind of friends any bloke with a heart or a brain wishes he could have, but most of us never will. They're David and Jonathan, they're Damon and what's-his-face, they're"—he scowled at Phil over his glass as he searched for the right comparison—"Butch Cassidy and the _Sundance Kid._ They're a _team._ But you have no idea what that means, do you, Anderson?" Then he'd swilled the last of his drink around—he'd moved on from pints to whisky some time ago—and a shadow seemed to cross his face. "You have no idea what that means," he repeated, roughly. " _Either_ of you."

And then he'd looked from Phil to Sally, and from Sally to Phil, and then back at his glass again, and Sally had thought with a sudden stab of terror, "He means _us._ He means we're not the kind of team we should be. Not the kind of team he wants."

She'd always remembered that moment. She worried a lot about it afterwards, but she'd never been able to think _why_ the D.I. might have said that or what she should be doing about it, and in the end she put it down in a corner of her mind as one more thing to hold against the Freak, and even John—that somehow, in some way that was more than just Sherlock being such a bloody freaking genius, they'd managed to make her boss unhappy with the way she did her job.

Sitting by the fire in the Cricketers' Arms now, Lestrade was thinking about John and Sherlock again, too.

 _They've both been off-kilter today,_ he thought, as he sipped his whisky and stared into the fire. _John isn't well, that's obvious, and Sherlock—I've never seen him act at a crime scene like he did today. It must have actually got to him, having the body be someone he was friends with once._

 _But he hasn't just had Trevor on his mind all day. He's been worried about John as well—you can see it in that look he gave him at the door, like he was the doctor and he was calculating whether the man needed paracetamol or another drink or a walk in the rain. Donovan would say that's just because he wants John's admiration when he makes one of his brilliant deductions. But there's more to it than that, I'm sure—a whole bloody lot more, though it's not the kind of more Anderson thinks at all._

 _And then there's John. He said something about too many bad nights. Never think of him having bad nights; he always seems such a normal, steady sort. He's been looking completely done in today. And yet all day he's been pulling himself together and keeping on going, because he knows Sherlock needs him working beside him as much as he needs the case itself, and John's not going to let Sherlock down, no matter what he's feeling like. He'd have to be in his grave before he'd do that. I hope that idiot genius knows how good a friend he's got there._

Greg drained his glass and put it down with a sigh, hoping again that his gut—or maybe it was his heart—was right when it was telling him that the suspicions his too-well-trained mind had been entertaining about John earlier were all wrong.

He really did wish he had half as good a team to work with as those two had with each other.

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In the bathroom off the small and embarrassingly one-bedded room he hadn't wanted to book into in the first place, John cleaned the cuts on his hand and bandaged it, using the first-aid kit he always carried in one of the pockets of his coat. When he'd finished, Sherlock seemed to have taken over the armchair by the window, so John stretched himself out fully-clothed on the bed.

"Take your shoes off," Sherlock said, without looking up from his phone. "And take these."

He stretched a hand out, still not looking up, and put something on the bed beside John. A small bottle of over-the-counter paracetamol. With codeine.

"Where the hell did you get _that?_ " John said, not moving to touch it.

"Innkeeper."

"He shouldn't be selling it."

"Didn't sell it."

"Dear God. Please tell me you didn't just take that from his desk while I was in the loo, like Lance's keys."

"Victor's keys. And no, I didn't. I asked, very nicely, and he gave it to me for you."

"Very _nicely?_ "

"I can be nice."

John snorted. "When it suits your purpose."

"There's a bottle of water on the bedside table."

John closed his eyes and listened to the throbbing in his hand, his head, his shoulder, his leg. The shoulder wasn't supposed to be troubling him anymore, so he shouldn't treat that as real, but the pain in his hand, at least, wasn't psychosomatic. One tablet would take the edge off things a bit. Two might let him get some sleep. He needed that more than the food he hadn't been able to eat, or the whisky he'd had no business indulging in.

On the other hand, he didn't need Sherlock hearing what happened every time he actually managed to fall asleep. He'd probably heard some of it already, but John didn't think even Sherlock's keen ears could have caught more than his loudest cries. And he didn't think Sherlock had ever _watched_ him having a nightmare. Not that he'd put it past the bastard, but he knew he'd wake up if anyone came into his room. He'd always been a light sleeper. Hyper-vigilance—he'd learned about that for the first time in med school, and thought it explained a good deal.

He took one. Thirty minutes later the throbbing had decreased slightly, but in spite of his efforts to breathe slowly, deeply, and evenly he was still lying there with his eyes closed and his mind wide awake, unable to avoid listening to Sherlock, who—having fulfilled whatever strange compulsion he had felt to attend to John's needs—was now pacing up and down in front of the curtained window and talking out loud to himself. Or perhaps to John, even though John hadn't answered for the past half-hour. Or perhaps to the absent skull.

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Sherlock wanted a cigarette. Or his violin. Or both. Most of all he wanted John to talk to, but John was sleeping, so he had to make do with talking to himself.

The answer was _there,_ he knew it. He could feel it hovering just out of sight at the edge of his mind, flitting in and out like the play of shadow and moonlight at the edge of a forest at night—like the elusive killer lining up his shot from the edge of the wood behind The Gables, taking aim out of the darkness at the black-clad, backlit figure he could only just have been able to make out in the greenish light of his night scope. But every time Sherlock tried to pin the answer down, it slipped away from him, flitting back into the shadows at the edge of his mind, where he _knew_ it lay lurking, waiting for him. If only he were smarter. If only he could make himself think more clearly, more like Mycroft. . . .

"Why here?" he said out loud, for the fifteenth time. " _That's_ the question. Why do it here? Why _here?_ "

"Why _not_ here?" John said irritably, opening his eyes. Sherlock looked at him in surprise; he'd really thought John was asleep. He clearly needed to be. That was what Sherlock had got him the co-cetamol for.

Still, John was awake now, so Sherlock might as well take advantage of the situation. He always thought better when he could talk something out to John.

"London's the obvious place to murder someone," he said. "So many crowds to hide in; so many places to shoot from—Mycroft's CCTV coverage is as full of holes as a sieve. With a million options there, why on earth would our killer drag himself and his gear down here? Why hide himself in the woods in the early hours of a miserably cold, wet morning, risking detection from the extensive security surrounding Victor's house, when the whole thing could have been done with so much less trouble and risk in the city?"

"But Trevor hadn't been to his city house in weeks. He was here."

" _Trevor?_ No, no, _no,_ John! You're missing the point completely. Victor was never the intended target. The killer was trying to shoot _me._ "

John pushed himself up on an elbow.

" _You?_ " he said, incredulously. And then, remembering what Sherlock had shown him back at the house before they were interrupted, "You mean . . . he shot at that _painting_ of you?"

"Precisely."

Sherlock felt a great surge of affection for his friend. John wasn't nearly so stupid as he sometimes seemed. Infinitely less stupid, in fact, than most people, even if still quite normal in comparison to Sherlock himself or to Mycroft—whose intelligence was the gold standard to which Mycroft's little brother was always aspiring, even though he seized every gleeful opportunity that opened up to denigrate it. He felt relieved that John had seen the point after all; he'd been worried for a moment there. But, of course, John wasn't himself today. The headache in particular would impair his already less-than-optimal mental processes. . . .

John tried to concentrate on this new possibility.

"Because the bullet scored the edge of the—not the frame, it wasn't framed, but whatever you call the wooden structure the painting is attached to."

"The stretcher. Yes. Lance and Victor apparently quarreled several times about that painting—first in London, then when Lance drove down the night before last, and then again yesterday morning, when the carpenters walked in on them. Lance left in a huff and didn't return last night. But he did come back today. Victor had probably texted him to apologize. Or Lance had texted Victor. In any case, Lance clearly didn't regard the quarrel as the final break in their relationship—he wanted to cook a special meal for them both today, hence the car full of groceries."

"That could have been a ruse, I suppose. To make himself look innocent."

"It could have been, but it wasn't. As I told Lestrade this evening, Lance couldn't possibly have been the killer. He doesn't have the necessary experience—not _any_ experience—with a gun."

"That's right, you did say that. Something about having seen his hands and his house. What the hell would a man's hands or his house have to look like to show he knows how to use a gun?"

Sherlock smiled slightly. Definitely not so stupid.

"Well, Lestrade bought that one, anyway. But you can't actually see Lance making that shot from the woods, can you? And it _had_ to be made from the woods. Victor was carrying that portrait when he was shot. You saw the mark left on the bottom stretcher by the bullet. He had had it propped up on his bedroom mantelpiece—I found a mark from one of those rusty staples on the new paint over the mantel. It could hardly have been shot there without leaving a bullet hole in the wall behind it."

 _No wonder Lance was upset,_ John thought. _Some trouble-making old gossip at a party plants the idea in his mind that his husband had been more in love with Sherlock than he could ever be with him, and Trevor not only leaves him and storms off down to the country, but takes the painting with him and props it up on his bedroom mantelpiece, where he can see it when he's lying in bed._ _If I were married and my wife did that to me, I wouldn't be in any doubt what it meant._

Lance, he remembered, had said that Victor had told him that "it wasn't what he thought." John could guess what that meant, too. He'd have liked to have heard Sherlock's version of what had happened all those years ago, but that wasn't the kind of thing Sherlock ever talked about.

"The ashes in the fireplace," Sherlock was saying, "show that Victor was in the habit of using it. They were still warm when I examined the room this morning, and there was a substantial piece of charred wood in the grate that hadn't been completely burnt through. The alarm on the clock by the bed was set for five—Victor had to wake early, to catch the train into London and get to Westminster at a reasonable hour. He would have turned on his bedside lamp—it was the only light on in the room this morning, except the one in that walk-in wardrobe, which would not have been turned on yet—and then got out of bed and lit the fire. Or, more likely, stirred up the embers of the fire he'd had there the night before, and added a bit more wood to the flames. Then he showered, shaved, and got dressed. Then he must have gone back to the fireplace and taken down the picture from the mantel. I imagine he meant to put it in his wardrobe—not the walk-in one, which was still under construction, but the freestanding armoire where he actually kept his clothes."

"So it would be out of sight, if Lance came back later that day."

"Precisely. As he was taking the painting to the armoire, he stepped over to his desk. His phone must have buzzed. I checked it; he actually had several work-related messages that were sent between 5:00 and 6:00 this morning."

"Before dawn?"

"Before dawn. He was a government minister; he must have been used to that, if his colleagues or staff had found out he was likely to be up then."

"So he went to his desk to check his phone. And he was still carrying the picture."

"Yes. The desk stands between the windows. The curtains were already open, as we saw this morning—the room faced the garden and the woods, so it must have felt quite private. The window was open, too. Victor was the kind of traditionally-brought-up Englishman who likes plenty of fresh air when he sleeps."

"Hence the prop in the window."

"Hence the prop in the window, the lift-mechanism for which, in spite of the extensive work done elsewhere in the house, hadn't been replaced."

"It's an expensive job."

"Indeed. I imagine Victor thought it unnecessary, and Lance preferred to put their money—or rather, their debt—into flashier projects. In any case, Victor was crossing the room from the fireplace, which you'll remember is on the west side, to his armoire on the east side, next to the door to the walk-in wardrobe. And he took a detour to the desk, which is in the middle of the south wall between the two windows."

"Yes."

"He had just put on grey trousers and a dark shirt. He was carrying that portrait of me. It's not a particularly large picture, but the head and shoulders are life-sized and the face quite life-like, while the background is vague and shadowy. It has, as you observed, no frame. He would have been carrying it with its back towards him to protect the surface of the painting from rubbing against his body, and he would have shifted it to his right arm—if it wasn't there already—as he walked towards the desk, to leave his left hand free—he was left-handed, like you—to pick up his phone. So the picture was facing the south wall as he crossed the room. The light in the room was dim—a single lamp by the bedside, and some flickering firelight. His path from the fireplace to his desk took him in front of one of the uncurtained windows."

"And the killer was outside, looking through a night scope—which never gives the clearest view—and thought he was shooting you."

"Exactly."

John thought about that for a minute.

"He missed, then," he said at last. "He only gouged the bottom of the picture."

"Hardly surprising, at that distance, and with the stick that had been propping open the window probably deflecting the bullet somewhat when it was shot out."

"So he missed the face he was aiming at, but the bullet went under Trevor's arm and into his chest. Yes, that would work. The wound is just below the place where one's arm would be if one was carrying something like that. And the picture would have completely covered his face and shoulders with yours."

"But only if the shot was fired from the woods. From inside, or closer in, it would have been plain to anyone that they were looking at Victor carrying a painting, not at me."

"Why are you so sure that isn't what happened, Sherlock? The injury I saw and the fact that the bullet remained in the body, with no exit wound, are more consistent with the longer-distance shot from a high-powered, hunting-style pistol, but it isn't completely impossible that it could have been fired from a lower-velocity gun from the bedroom across the hall, if the main bedroom's door was open."

"It was locked, as you'll recall."

"Trevor might have locked it after he was shot—the way you think he did with the door on the walk-in wardrobe."

"Victor was a fairly modest man. After that scene with the carpenter's apprentice yesterday morning, he would have locked his bedroom door while he was dressing, to make sure she didn't walk in on him again today."

"That wound could also have been caused by a shorter-distance shot from the garden, though. One that could have been made without a night-vision scope and with a clearer view of who the killer was shooting at. Your theory about the portrait is very clever, Sherlock, but the fact is, anyone waiting in those woods or getting into the garden with a gun would hardly have been expecting to see _you_ in that window. Wherever they took the shot from, they were there to kill Trevor—that's the only thing that makes any sense."

"The security would have kept anyone from getting into the garden who wasn't supposed to be there. The tapes have not been edited. The shot _has_ to have been made from the edge of the wood, and the shooter _has_ to have thought he was seeing me. If he'd been trying to kill Victor, he wouldn't have pulled the trigger."

"Maybe he thought it was Lance. There _are_ some physical similarities between the two of you."

Sherlock frowned at that. "He couldn't have thought it was Lance. That portrait's a very good likeness of me."

"You've changed, you know. I'm sure it was an excellent likeness fifteen years ago, but today? Not so much."

"It's still close enough to be recognizable. Donovan and Anderson recognized it. So did Lestrade. And you."

"You still haven't answered my question—why on earth would anyone be lurking with a gun in the woods outside Victor Trevor's country home, if they wanted to kill _you?_ "

"That's what I've been saying! That's the problem! _Why_ _here?_ "

"There's another problem, too: _who._ "

"Naturally. But for me, there are always plenty of _who's_. Anyone I've ever put in gaol. Or anyone who wants to get to my brother—though kidnapping would be more useful there. I was hoping to see a familiar face on the security team, or amongst the carpenters, or even in the photographs on display in the old ladies' house next door. Someone who had another reason to be here, who saw my face in the window and took the opportunity to shoot at me. But I haven't recognized anyone I've had dealings with before. Of course, there's always the other possibility: that it isn't someone who wants revenge for something I've done to him in the past, but someone who's afraid of what I could do to him now."

"Or in the future."

"Yes."

"Why wouldn't they go for you in Baker Street, then? I know Mycroft's got his cameras up, but there are still lots of ways someone could jump you without being seen."

That had been John's nightmare, ever since that incident at the pool—if he could be kidnapped and shoved into a Semtex vest, so could Sherlock. He had dreamt about it often, and still did, alongside those other, noisier nightmares that Baskerville had triggered in him again.

"And _that's the whole question!_ " Sherlock snapped. "That's what I've been asking myself, over and over— _why here?_ There has to be some connection! But I can't think of any. The only person who could possibly have the slightest reason, however absurd, to imagine that he might find me in Victor's bedroom is Lance, and Lance is an insecure, feckless, self-indulgent man, but he's not a murderer. He doesn't have the inclination, or the training, or the access to a weapon. He wouldn't pick up a gun if Victor had begged him to; he'd be afraid of getting his hands dirty or having it go off in his face. No, it's not Lance I have to worry about—it's someone else. But _why were they here?_ _What's the connection between them and this place and me?_ "

A terrible awareness had begun to creep over John as Sherlock spoke. It made him feel simultaneously as if every nerve were on fire, and yet numb all over.

He didn't want to give voice to what he was thinking. He realized now, with a stab of self-disgust, that the thought had been there all day at the back of his aching, exhausted, and distracted mind, and he'd been hating it, and avoiding it, and completely failing to look it in the face and deal with it.

He'd told himself it didn't concern anyone but him. That it didn't matter, that it couldn't possibly be relevant to the case. That Mycroft, and therefore Sherlock, must know all about it already, and so there wasn't any need to say anything. That even if by some extraordinary oversight, some failure of Holmesian research or observation or deduction, or some other stroke of unimaginably good luck they actually didn't know, there was no need to bring it up.

He'd run into combat again and again, tended the wounded while wounded himself, put his freedom and his life on the line to save Sherlock's time after time—but today he'd been allowing himself to believe that there were limits to what anyone could reasonably expect him to do to himself. That he didn't have to do _that_.

But if there was any possibility at all that the killer had been after _Sherlock . . ._ well, that was another story. John no longer had any choice.

"Sherlock," he began, and it seemed to take extraordinary physical effort to force the words out of his suddenly dry-as-dust mouth. "There's something I need to—"

But Sherlock, who had been pacing up and down the small room muttering, " _Someone who's afraid of me,"_ and " _What's the connection?"_ suddenly whirled around mid-stride and snapped his fingers in the air.

"That's _it!_ " he cried, his eyes blazing. " _That's_ what I was forgetting! Someone's been trying to buy the house! Everyone said so—that Pansy woman next door, Lance. They'd had lots of offers, persistent offers, someone willing to spend more than even Lance thought it was worth, and he'd been pouring money into it as if he'd never heard the word "recession." Someone was willing to pay top dollar to get that house. Why would anyone do that, in this market? It makes no sense. Unless there was something special about _that_ house, something unique, something they wanted badly that only that place could give them. Someone who grew up there and just wanted it back for the memories? No. The last owners sold it only a year ago; they wouldn't want it back so badly, so soon. It was a wreck before they fixed it up; it hadn't been cared for by any adult; bad things happened to the children who lived there—no one could have happy memories from a place like that. Could there be some kind of treasure hidden there, then? That's much more likely—but then there wouldn't be any reason to be afraid of _me_. So, there's something someone was hoping to cover up, some secret they had to preserve, a crime they needed to keep hidden—something from the past. The past—of _course!_ That old woman next door! She talked about a body _._ She's a nutcase—obviously a complete idiot long before she started going senile, but even total lunatics can get things right once in a while. That must be it. There's a body hidden somewhere on the property. The killer saw me in the window and thought I was here to investigate what he'd done—"

" _Who?_ " John demanded, pulling himself up and swinging his legs off the bed. " _Whose_ body? Who said there was a body? _Where?_ "

"I have no idea whose, or where it's hidden. The old woman next door talked about it. She's certifiable—thinks gathering herbs by moonlight will turn them into medicines, kept saying we'd find the body in a _pillbox_ , but—"

"That's not so crazy." John was on his feet now. His legs felt like jelly—they were trembling underneath him—but he put a hand on the bedside table to steady himself and managed to stay standing.

"John. _Please._ I know you think there's something to be said for a few practices of traditional medicine, but _moonlight!_ And if you'd seen her, talking about bodies in pillboxes and rattling her big plastic one—"

"Not _that_ kind of pillbox, Sherlock! The GHQ hardened defense line went right through this area. There's a pillbox at the bottom of the garden—we were looking at it this afternoon, remember?" And then, seeing the unusually blank expression on Sherlock's face, he added, "That old World War II bunker down there by the fence near the wood. They're called pillboxes, because of their shape."

Sherlock blinked, just once. Then he grabbed John's sleeve.

" _Come on!"_ he said. "I've got to see it _now_!"

John stared at him wildly before kicking his shoes on, catching up his coat and gun, and letting Sherlock drag him out of the room, downstairs, and out to Gabriel Lance's car.

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It might actually have stopped raining now, John thought. He couldn't really tell if the tiny drops of water running down the windscreen of the car were rain or misty condensation from the fog that lay over the road and what he could see of the fields beyond. The car's headlamps reflected off the droplets, creating beams of shimmering crystals that were, quite literally, eye-dazzling. Sherlock had had to lower the beams of the Audi's headlamps in order to see at all. To both men's intense frustration, he was having to drive much more slowly than he had earlier.

Sometimes they hit a spot in the road where the fog had lifted, and John could see, high above them, ragged clouds scudding across the sky as if they were being chased by fiends. They showed up as lighter patches against darker ones, illuminated as if from within by the clear, cold light that, every now and then, was suddenly revealed as a nearly full moon. Then the wind would chase the thicker clouds over its disk, and the road would be plunged into darkness again.

It was an eerie effect, that wild sky soaring dramatically over the heavy stillness of the fog. John let himself wonder whether the wind would eventually find its way down to ground level and blow the mist away, or whether the stuff would settle in for days. They weren't that far from the sea.

He was making a deliberate effort to focus on every detail of the little he could see around him. It was easier than letting himself dwell on anything else. But it didn't loosen the agonizing knot in his gut, or calm the tremors that were making not only his hands but every inch of his body seem to convulse in terrible anticipation.

He hadn't told Sherlock anything. He didn't think he was capable of speech now. He could only watch as drops of moisture dripped down the windscreen and clouds swept over the moon and Sherlock drove through the fog and the patches of light—watch, and try not to fly apart with the strain of waiting.

The gate of The Gables opened by itself for its owner's car. Sherlock parked in the drive behind the trees. He shut his door quietly. John did the same.

They made their way through the screen of trees to the bushes on the east side of the front garden. Then they crept on hands and knees through these, avoiding the security lights and cameras. When they reached the corner of the house, Sherlock took out his phone, brought up a site John had never seen before, and started entering numbers. After a minute or two of this, the tiny lights on all the cameras John could see went dark.

"Right," Sherlock said, sounding pleased with himself. "We can stand up now."

"How did you find out how to do _that?_ " John hissed at him, as they walked carefully forwards, relying on the darkness and fog for cover now, but keeping a sharp eye out for any sign of life or light from other cameras, or from the windows of the house.

"A few minutes spent looking over the shoulder of the very surly agent manning the computer room this afternoon," Sherlock murmured. "I'll have to tell Mycroft these people really have no idea how much information they make available to the observant eye."

John could _feel_ his friend's smile without seeing it. He wondered briefly if Sherlock could feel the hard set of his own mouth and eyes, the tension that was racking every muscle in his body till they trembled under the strain. Probably not. The man was unique in his observational abilities, but he tended to be quite single-minded about what he focused them on.

They made it to the bottom of the long garden without incident. The statue of Diana loomed up at them out of the fog, her formerly cheerful-looking pack of hound pups transformed by strange swirls of moonlight and mist into wolf-like creatures with threatening leers.

The old bunker was padlocked, but Sherlock had no trouble picking the lock and removing the chain. He slid back the heavy bolt and pulled. The door opened without resistance, suggesting—like the condition of the padlock and chain—that it was in regular use.

Sherlock pulled a torch from his pocket and swept the inside of the pillbox with it.

" _Fascinating,_ " he murmured.

Even in daylight, the space would be dark. About six meters square, it had only narrow slits for windows—gun embrasures, wider on the inside than out. A thick concrete wall ran most of the way across the middle of the room. Sherlock studied this for a moment, frowning, before realizing what it was: a blast wall that defending soldiers could shelter behind when the door of their bunker was under attack.

The other walls and floor were also concrete, cracked and crumbling in places, and green with mould. The smell of damp was overpowering, but after a moment Sherlock also detected the odours of charcoal, manure, and compost, as well as other things that took his nose a little longer to sort out, like fungicide and chemical fertilizer. The old bunker was being used as a garden shed: a round Weber barbeque had been rolled just inside the door, and next to a rather dilapidated ride-on mower with flat tyres and one missing wheel he could see garden tools, clay pots, and bags of fertilizer.

He moved deeper into the bunker, poking the beam of his torch into every corner. At the back, behind the blast wall, he found a stack of empty wooden orange crates and a large pile of old and rusty machinery, including a cider press, a World War II-vintage paraffin cooker, and an ancient, rusting tractor that for some reason was lying upside down, rotted tyres and corroded wheels in the air, like a sleeping dog.

Sherlock handed the torch to John, who was standing silently behind him. Then he took off his beloved coat, folded it, and placed it carefully on the cleanest-looking thing he could see—one of the orange crates. He took the torch back and set it on top of the coat, so the beam illuminated the pile of machinery in the opposite corner. John showed no signs of shedding his jacket, but stepped forward and started shifting the smaller pieces off the pile before Sherlock had finished positioning the light.

Sherlock joined him. They worked in silence, tugging and heaving the rusty pieces of metal off the pile and stacking them against the blast wall. It was hard work, though it helped that they were both wearing gloves.

The tractor nearly defeated them, though. It was lying in a slight depression in the concrete floor; to move it they needed to lift the chassis over the edge of this, but the machine was so heavy that even with two of them trying to heave it, it wouldn't budge. After a few minutes of Herculean effort they were both as breathless as if they'd been running a marathon. Sherlock stepped back and glared at the thing, his chest heaving.

"How did this thing get on its _back?_ " he demanded, more to hear his own voice than anything else. There was something oppressive about the silence in which they'd been working. Or perhaps it was simply the time of day and the space, with its stained walls, its narrow windows letting in wisps of fog, its heavy odours of damp and decay. "Why couldn't it have died standing up, like any other self-respecting piece of machinery? And why isn't there anything we could use for a lever? Or some rope for a pulley? That's how this thing was moved in the first place. Look how the concrete's been broken away in the ceiling there, to put a rope over that beam."

John didn't answer, but threw himself at the upside-down tractor again with a savage fury that seemed to surge up from some deep, untapped place inside him. The rusted metal shrieked as the front end lifted and scraped over the floor. Sherlock added his weight to John's, and when they had to let go the front few inches of tractor body were out of the trough in the floor. After that things went more easily until, shrieking and protesting, the tractor was finally moved out of the way.

" _Aha!_ " Sherlock sighed with satisfaction. "Just as I expected."

Where the chassis of the tractor had lain, a square of concrete floor had been broken into pieces. Some had gaps nearly half an inch wide around them, filled with pebbly bits of crumbled concrete. Sherlock darted around the blast wall and returned with two of the garden spades that had been stored on the other side. He handed one to John, who took it and stood for a moment, leaning on its wooden handle and breathing hard. Then he set his mouth grimly and joined Sherlock in digging out the broken pieces of concrete. They came readily enough, as if they'd been moved before.

Underneath the concrete they found dirt.

"Loose-packed," Sherlock pointed out with excitement. "Not the kind of base anyone would have poured concrete onto."

John grunted and said nothing, but instead of attacking the soil with the wild fury he'd directed at the tractor, he worked more and more slowly, each shovelful of dirt seeming heavier and harder to lift than the one before it. Even Sherlock shoveled more carefully as they went deeper, not wanting to destroy any evidence with a misplaced blow from the blade of his tool.

They had been digging for about ten minutes when Sherlock's spade connected with something hard. When he lifted the soil out and poked the shovel around, it met resistance in place after place.

"Yessss!" he hissed. "Yes, yes, _yes!_ This is it! Bring the torch, John, so we can see. I'll get a trowel for the last bit, and a brush if I can find one, but I'll need you to hold the light."

Stiffly, mechanically, John obeyed. He stood over Sherlock and shone the light into the hole. About three feet down, something hard and brownish-white poked out of a piece of torn black plastic covered with sandy soil.

John's gorge rose at the sight, but he held the torch as steadily as he could while Sherlock crouched over their excavation and brushed away the soil with all the focused concentration of an archaeologist at a dig. More carefully than he had been working earlier, but still much more quickly than any genuine archaeologist, he began to unearth what they had found. His head and shoulders blocked some of John's view of the proceedings, but he kept up a steady stream of patter about what he was finding:

"There's a layer of plastic on top; probably another underneath. A bin bag, or maybe a tarp. I've got something hard, round—could be a patella. Yes, definitely—here's the tibia beside it, with the fibula, and the femur's here, too. The plastic couldn't have provided a fully anaerobic environment; they're quite skeletonized. It looks like the body was folded before being buried, to fit into the hole—or into the bag or tarp for carrying, probably. It's a woman's, I think, or a boy's—oh, no, _definitely_ a woman's, here's the rest of her. Hips. . . Ribs. . . Vertebrae. . . Arm and hand bones. . . . She's on her side. Some of her clothing's still here—synthetic fibres do last well. And her jewelry. There's a bracelet—oh, no, a watch; badly corroded, of course. I can't see any rings. No, wait, here's one, a wedding band, on a chain. Together with a pendant of some sort—might be a locket, quite big and heavy, must have been uncomfortable to wear. Why do women do these things to themselves? And here's the skull. Oh, look, John, this is fascinating! The plastic must have been wrapped more tightly here: her face has been partly mummified, there's even a few bits of hair still! You don't see that often. Take a look, and tell me how long you think she's been here."

He sat back on his heels to let John see. John stared down into the grave, knowing he shouldn't, unable to stop. A strangled sound came from the back of his throat. He couldn't stop that, either.

"John?" Sherlock looked up at his friend. " _John?_ What's the matter?"

The torch dropped from John's nerveless fingers, clattering down into the grave. He turned and staggered away, stumbling through the dark towards the door.

But Sherlock had seen his face. It had been twisted with so much horror and pain that, thirty years later, the world's only consulting detective would still sometimes wake in the night and, glancing around in a desperate attempt to anchor himself in the real world instead of his dream, find that image of his friend superimposed over everything his eyes rested on, as if it were stamped on the backs of his retinas and he would never be able to see anything else again.

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" _John!_ " Sherlock called, running faster than he'd ever known he could. " _John!"_

There was no answer, only sounds he'd never heard John make before.

Sherlock found him crouching beside a tree, his face all but buried in its bark—which even in the patchy, fog-filtered moonlight Sherlock could see was chequered grey and brown, which meant the tree was _sorbus torminalis,_ "wild service" or "chequer" tree, rare now in England, found mostly in ancient woodlands, fruit edible when over-ripe, once used to flavour beer and as a remedy for some childish ailment—colic?—and for God's sake, high-functioning sociopathic genius or not, what was the _matter_ with him that his mind produced and processed this information right alongside the facts that John was retching violently, shaking from head to foot, and crying like a child, gasping and sobbing.

Sherlock stood helplessly beside him. He had no idea what to say or do. The pieces were all clicking into place now. _Stupid,_ _ **stupid**_ _!_ he berated himself. _How_ _ **could**_ _you have been so idiotically, appallingly,_ _ **criminally**_ _stupid, to have missed that?_ But he had missed it. The damage had been done, and there was nothing he could do to fix it now.

Gradually, John's reactions quieted. He must have known Sherlock was watching, because he finally wiped his face with his hands and looked up.

"That fucking son-of-a-bitch," he choked out, his voice like sandpaper on stone. "Why didn't I kill the fucking cunt when I had the chance?"

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Sherlock put out a hand to help John to his feet.

"Your—" he hesitated for a moment. Not father, no—John kept a picture of his father in his room. "Stepfather?"

John nodded tightly. He didn't ask how Sherlock knew. The detective hoped desperately that John didn't think he'd known _before_ they opened the grave, before John's reactions had made his connection to it unmistakable. But all he could find to say was, "You think he killed her?"

It was a ridiculous question, its answer beyond obvious, but he hoped John would read in its redundancy and in his unusual desire to defer to John's opinion at least some of the regret he was feeling for everything that had just happened, his concern about everything he now realized had happened years ago.

"Who else would have done it?" John asked, his voice still rough with emotion.

"No one suspected?"

"We thought she'd just left. There was a note. . . ."

John's voice shook. He swallowed and looked away. Sherlock had no idea what else to say.

Then he realized that John was still shaking—deep, convulsive shudders that racked him from head to toe. Shock, of course. That part of it, at least, Sherlock could do something about. There was a rustic-looking bench nearby; he took John by the elbow and steered him over to it.

"Sit here," he said, and ran back to the pillbox for his coat to wrap around John to warm him.

Inside the thick walls of the bunker, behind the blast wall, he didn't hear the footsteps. Only a quiet clank as the door shut, followed—too quickly for him to do anything to stop it—by a soft scraping sound as the bolt slid across.

And then a low laugh, and a man's voice saying, in the public-school drawl of a generation earlier, "Oh, Hamish. Oh, Johnny, my boy. Didn't I teach you never to drop your gun?"

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	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Author's note: An alert for a considerable amount of swearing in this chapter.

My thanks, as always, to Fang's Fawn for her very helpful suggestions. I've adopted some, but not others, so any problems that remain are entirely my own fault—including that ridiculously long sentence about John's name, which she wisely tried to get me to re-write into something more digestible, and I, wedded to my own folly, decided to keep as it was.)

It might be helpful to remember that the last chapter ended like this:

" _Sit here," [Sherlock] said, and ran back to the pillbox for his coat to wrap around John to warm him._

 _Inside the thick walls of the bunker, behind the blast wall, he didn't hear the footsteps. Only a quiet clank as the door shut, followed—too quickly for him to do anything to stop it—by a soft scraping sound as the bolt slid across._

 _And then a low laugh, and a man's voice saying, in the public-school drawl of a generation earlier, "Oh, Hamish. Oh, Johnny, my boy. Didn't I teach you never to drop your gun?"_

Chapter 18:

There was a pause. Through the narrow slit of the window nearest the door, Sherlock could see nothing but moonlit fog. But sounds carry remarkably well through fog, and his hearing had always been acute. Perhaps that's how he knew that John was sitting absolutely still, not letting out the breath he had just drawn in; how he knew when John finally let the breath out and started to get to his feet; when his hand moved to his pocket and found nothing there.

Sherlock didn't have to have particularly acute hearing to catch what happened next.

"Jack," John said flatly. And then, not flatly at all but in a voice steeped in absolute loathing, " _You killed her, you fucking son of a bitch!"_

Sherlock heard the sounds of someone running full-out towards the pillbox, interrupted by the sharp crack of a gun and a gasp from John. Sherlock threw his whole weight against the door, bruising his shoulder and hip. The door didn't budge. John's footsteps, which had faltered and seemed to stumble after the gunshot, resumed, less steadily than before.

"Hamish," the older man's voice said, in warning tones.

"Kill . . . you," John panted, much closer than he had been. Sherlock's relief at hearing him speak was mixed with fear—John was moving, but he'd obviously been hit. Where? And how badly?

Then John must have reached his target, because there was a smacking sound and a grunt as one of the men threw a punch and connected. Sherlock could hear feet shuffling on grass, more grunts and ragged breathing, the disturbingly loud crunch of fists against flesh and bone. Then a sickening-sounding blow from something harder—a pistol barrel?—followed by a sharp cry of pain, and a heavy thud as someone fell to the ground.

"I wouldn't try that again, Hamish." The older man sounded amused. An irrational blaze of fury made Sherlock throw himself against the door again, but the gesture accomplished nothing except more bruises on his hip and shoulder.

"Fucking . . . son of . . . a bitch." John's voice was weak and breathless. For the first time, Sherlock remembered that he had his mobile in his pocket. He pulled it out, silenced it, and hit 999.

"Such language, boy. That's no way to speak to me. And why weren't you carrying a second weapon?"

A string of curses in Pashto followed. Sherlock wasn't familiar enough with the language to recognize them all, but suspected that "filthy piece of shit" was one of the milder ones. John's voice was growing weaker. Why wasn't anyone at 999 answering?

"That's bleeding quite heavily," the man said, sounding gently concerned. "I'm not going to press my luck by getting any closer to you; you can't have forgotten _everything_ I taught you. I assume you have a first aid kit; tend to the injury yourself. Then we'll talk. Don't rush me again. It will be another bullet next time, and it will go somewhere more debilitating."

999 wasn't answering, Sherlock realized, because he hadn't connected to it in the first place: his phone was getting no reception. _Shit._ He reached as far into the window embrasure as he could with the phone, then hit 999 again, awkwardly, with his thumb. Still no reception. _Shit, shit, shit._

The fact that he was letting his mind waste neurons on swearing was a bad sign. He made a conscious effort to close the door on his emotions and moved on to another window slit, but he could feel the fear and fury still raging behind that mental door, which seemed to be somewhere in his stomach. It didn't help that the most noticeable of the smells drifting into the pillbox with the fog was the sharp, coppery tang of blood.

"What . . . are . . . _you_ . . . doing . . . _here_?" John panted.

He seemed to be speaking through his teeth. Pressing himself as deep into the window as he could, Sherlock tried to get reception for his phone, while straining to pick up every whisper of sound he could. He thought he heard John's jacket being unzipped, then John fumbling with something—shirt buttons, maybe—while keeping up a steady string of curses under his breath. Since he was still moving and able to speak, Sherlock concluded that the bullet had missed John's arteries and most vital organs; wherever he'd been hit, the wound would be painful but survivable. Behind the door in Sherlock's mind the fear eased a little, though the anger continued to storm.

There were other smells under the blood. His mind began to sort them out, mechanically, a background routine. Mud. Sweat. And, rather oddly, roses.

"What I came here to do, Hamish," the man answered. "Get rid of the evidence. And, since I seem to have failed in my attempt earlier today to eliminate the man who has been preying so unnaturally on your affections, to finish that job as well."

There was a pause, as if John were considering what part of that to respond to first. Sherlock dialed 999 again. Still no answer. He didn't know whether he was surprised or not when what John finally said was, "You fucking homophobe. You still think I'm gay."

"Your sister set you a bad example."

Sherlock had begun to identify more of the elusive scents now. Of course, how could it have taken him so long? Geranium. Patchouli. Musk. And other, even more familiar, things. . . .

"That's _Harry_. I can't believe—did you actually shoot at Sherlock in that window because you thought he'd been screwing _me?_ "

For a moment, Sherlock froze. What an extraordinary idea. That was a motive he had never even considered. It would almost have been comic, if the situation weren't so serious.

But it was quite serious. John's voice was sounding stronger now that he'd had a chance to give himself first aid, but, no matter how solicitous the older man's manner might be, it was clear that he was going to kill both of them before much longer—and Sherlock's phone was never going to work inside the bunker. The walls were three feet thick. Their concrete finish might be crumbling in places, but they had been designed to withstand an assault from an attacking army; they had lasted seventy years already, and looked like they might still be standing after another seventy.

There was only one door—not the original, which must have rusted off its hinges or been vandalized decades earlier, but a newer steel model that had been set with the hinges on the outside. The crack between the door and its frame was too narrow to give him any access to the bolt, or to let him fit in the blade of a shovel, or even a trowel, to try to pry it open.

He needed to focus. He needed to retreat into his mind palace and shut out what was happening around him, so he could think of a way out of this mess.

He tried. He felt as if he was trying harder than he'd ever had to try before. But his mind simply refused to close itself to the voices drifting on the fog through the windows of the pillbox—John's, and the man John had called "Jack," who called him "Hamish"—the man Sherlock knew must be John's long-absent stepfather, John Sebastian Moran, Parachute Regiment sharpshooter and Victor's murderer, whom he now had no difficulty identifying as both the Geo. F. Trumper-wearing intruder he had dubbed "Spanish Leather," and the owner of several large, heavily salivating dogs.

"Screwing you and two-timing you to boot." The man's voice was a smooth baritone, not entirely unlike Sherlock's own. "If you're going to behave like a miserable little faggot, Hamish, you should at least be more careful where you place your, er, affections. But no, I'm afraid I can't claim you as my primary motivation for that shot this morning; only a secondary one at best. The whole thing was really quite a spontaneous act—not what I was planning at all."

"What the fuck did you think you were doing, then?"

"Language, Hamish! I'd have given you ten strokes for that when you were younger. If I didn't have more urgent things to attend to, I'd give them to you now."

"Like I'd let you. You'd have to get close to me for that."

"A point. Well, the truth is, I'd been keeping an eye on this place for some time. When the current owners started to make use of the old pillbox, I became concerned that their mania for renovation would eventually extend to the outbuildings. I tried to buy the house, but they wouldn't sell. Foolish of them—I was offering far more than they had any right to expect, and the younger one had got himself into serious financial difficulties. Too much fondness for the high life, I'm afraid."

"You'd know all about that."

Remembering the aromas of premium scotch and marijuana that had hung around Mrs. Hudson after her night out on the town, Sherlock wondered how deeply Jack Moran's taste for high living had cut into his family's ability to pay for more basic necessities—the house, he recalled Pansy Briers saying, had been badly run down.

"Indeed," Moran purred. "I have, er, learned to moderate my approach since those days. It's better, I find, to be the one debts from the card table and so forth are owed _to_ , rather than the one owing them."

"Don't tell me you weren't a card shark and a dealer years ago."

In spite of John's obvious hostility, there was an evenness in his tone that was almost conversational. Sherlock, who knew his voice so well, could hear the effort it was costing him to keep his anger under control, and wondered why he thought it worth his while.

"Ah, Hamish. Let's just say I've got better at it. And I have a new job now, quite a lucrative one, so I was in a position to get Gabriel Lance out of his debts to me by buying the house. But he couldn't convince Trevor to sell."

There was the briefest of pauses before John answered.

"That _was_ you, then, who made Lance give up those paintings to settle his debts?" He sounded less surprised than Sherlock would have expected; clearly the possibility had occurred to him earlier in the day. "What was _that_ all about? How could that possibly help you, if you were trying to get this place out of him?"

"Ah, you've heard about that little business, have you? Yes, that was me. You see, I was possessed of a bit of information that Lance was unaware I had. In my somewhat chequered career as a schoolboy—you'll recall that I attended a number of well-known schools—"

"None of which would keep you, once they got to know you."

"A problem shared, I believe, by your friend Holmes. Yes, well, at one of those schools—I scarcely remember which—I became friendly with Victor Trevor's father. I visited him at his family home, where those paintings of the Coptic Patriarch were on display. Trevor senior was as proud of his grandfather's talent as I gather his son became later, and he told me their history. So when Lance claimed they were original Lewises and was willing to give them to me to settle his debt, I thought I had him where I wanted him. If the rumour got out that such a noted art dealer had made such a fraudulent claim, he would be ruined. To avoid exposure, I thought he would find a way to make Trevor part with the house. He wouldn't know that I was the buyer, of course, but it would raise the money to satisfy me—and the, er, _friends_ that I would let him know were deeply interested in my satisfaction."

"That must have been quite a lot of money you were planning to shell out. Doesn't sound like you. I can't remember you ever being willing to pay for anything, unless it was something you could smoke or drink or gamble away."

"I'll ignore that comment, Hamish—but you might remember that I am armed and you are not. I would have thought the pain in your arm would be enough to remind you of that."

"You've never been much for hearing the truth about yourself, have you?"

"Don't tempt me, Hamish. It would be so very easy to put another bullet into you."

Sherlock clapped his hands over his ears and whirled around the room, trying to shut out John's and Moran's voices, trying to force himself to _think._ What was the _matter_ with him that he couldn't come up with a way to get out of the bunker? Why on earth was his errant brain expending any of its precious synapses wondering whether there wasn't something more than anger and hate in John's voice, and insisting that he needed to understand it? Or worrying about why Moran hadn't simply killed John from the outset, why an expert killer was standing there talking, instead of getting on with the business he'd come for—and what exactly it was he thought he could feel underlying the whole exchange, that was making the conversation between John and Moran seem, even to him—Sherlock Holmes, the acknowledged master of the strange and the eccentric—unfathomably bizarre.

Even with his hands over his ears, though, he found he couldn't shut out what either man was saying.

"The expense wasn't so much, really," Moran was saying, in a tone like cream. "Not in comparison to what I had to gain. I wasn't planning to pay cash for the house, naturally; there was only the down payment to cover, and the first month on the mortgage. I'd have dug up that grave in the pillbox as soon as I took possession, then rented the place out and put it on the market again after a year or so, when prices had gone up. The gambling debts represented only a loss of my time, and not much of that—Lance wasn't the only fool at the table when we played. As for the drugs—well, he'll be back for more, won't he? And I have, as I said, a rather lucrative new career, as the aide-de-camp to a _highly_ successful, er—we'll call him a businessman, shall we? The money I'll be making from him made the prospect of a little outlay for this house pale in comparison. And, as I was saying, I'd been concerned for some time about the possibility that your mother's remains might be uncovered and the police brought in. In spite of the occasional little, er, _fracas,_ I've always managed to keep on the right side of the law."

"You've always managed to get somebody to pull strings to keep you out of prison, you mean."

"It comes to the same thing. Having a clean record is, I've found, quite useful. It's particularly so at the moment, as my current employer needs someone who can move in the best circles without attracting undue attention. My hitherto spotless reputation—"

"What a load of crap, Jack! You haven't had a spotless reputation since you were a new-born baby and you bit your nurse's tit."

Sherlock tensed, thinking John might have crossed a line and pushed the man he was taunting too far. But Moran only laughed.

"You _are_ amusing sometimes, Johnny, my boy," he said, sounding as if he actually meant it. "That's one of the things I've always liked about you. However, let's not quibble over words. I have no detectably marred record, either with the police or with the army. In the world in which my current employer operates, that's something of a rarity—especially when combined with my other skills. He has made it clear that he values what I bring to the table—highly. You really can't imagine how much money I stand to make if he continues to find me valuable. If, on the other hand, my reputation should change. . . ."

"Your 'lucrative new job' would be history. So you wanted to avoid a murder rap."

"Indeed. One does, under any circumstances, but my current ones make it a necessity. I'm afraid my employer would not take kindly to the idea that I had withheld this sort of information from him when we were first discussing the terms of my employment."

"So you freaked when you thought you saw Sherlock in the window this morning, and you took a pot-shot at him. Yeah, I can see that—you're a gambler, you like to take chances, and you'd always be armed. But what were you doing here in the first place?"

John had obviously got his temper under control again, and Moran, surprisingly, hadn't lost his. Sherlock relaxed a little. His mind began to work again.

 _Could he dig his way out from under the wall by starting with the grave? No—it would take too long to get down under the foundations, and the walls of any tunnel he could dig would be highly likely to collapse on him. Engineering, unfortunately, was not an area of study he had devoted any attention to. But there must be something else; the place was jammed with things he should be able to work with. Rusted-out, upside-down tractor? No. Something else then. What?_

"I'd come to check out the security arrangements. My intention was simply to shoot out the box where the electricity enters the house, and, with the cameras down and the guards focusing their attention on protecting the Minister, get into the pillbox and make the arrangements to dispose of your mother's remains permanently. I'd brought everything I needed with me. But you know how impulsive I am, Johnny. I'm afraid when I saw your, er— _companion_ in the window, I simply reacted. I was already concerned about him; I'd been reading your blog. You're quite famous now, you know—everyone was talking about the two of you at that party of Trevor's. That was when I realized just how dangerous your association with Holmes could be. I could hardly fail to foresee the day when your new, er— _friend_ would learn of your mother's disappearance and, being an old, er, _friend_ of my host, would visit—what is it they call this place now? 'The Gables'?—to investigate on your behalf. And then when Harriet started babbling in her blog about reading through your mother's journals and writing a memoir about the difficulties of her distressing childhood—"

 _Cider press? No. Paraffin cooker? The fuel was long gone, so . . . no._

"My God. That was _you,_ wasn't it? You're the one who hacked into Harry's computer and erased her files."

"Indeed. Unfortunately, she had them up again within hours. I wouldn't have thought she'd be so capable, but she surprised me."

 _Garden tools? He'd been through all those, but it might be worth going over them again: two spades, with long wooden handles. Two trowels. One iron rake. . . ._

"So you broke into her flat last night and stole her computer—and trashed the place while you were at it. What on earth was the point of that? Oh. I suppose you wanted my mother's journals, too, and had to search for them?"

"There was too much potential evidence there. I'd never thought of that danger until Harriet started writing about them on her blog, but I could hardly let her tell the world everything your mother might have written about me. And I was looking for something else, too, but it wasn't there."

 _Ride-on garden mower? If it had had all its wheels and he could have got it going, he might have been able to ram the door down with it, but one wheel was missing, and he hadn't seen anything he could use as a replacement. . . ._

"So _you're_ the one who coshed Harry. Jesus, Jack! You let her fall on her face on the bathroom floor. You left her lying there all smashed up, concussed, unconscious. You fucking bastard."

 _Weber barbecue?_

"My dear boy! Your concern for your sister has never ceased to amaze me. When did _she_ ever show such concern for _you_?"

 _The Weber had wheels, but they were far too small for the mower._

"She showed a whole fucking lot more concern than you ever did, you sadistic son-of-a-bitch. I can't believe I'm standing here having this conversation with you. You killed Mum. If I could get my hands on you—"

 _Shit,_ Sherlock thought, enunciating the word precisely in his mind—his ability to focus once again shot to pieces by the sudden surge of anger in John's voice, and by his choice of words.

Ever since he had been forced to listen to Pansy's long-winded stories that afternoon, Sherlock had been sure that the chattering fool of a woman had mostly exaggerated the troubles of the boy next door. It was the sort of thing talkative, middle-aged women like Pansy did: they seemed to crave the attention they could get by telling stories that tugged on their listeners' emotions; they never thought of themselves as liars, but they wouldn't hesitate to tweak facts and fictionalize wildly if doing it would bring tears to somebody's eyes. It never ceased to amaze him how many seemingly "nice," "kind," and comfortably-off women liked nothing better than a good cry over someone else's misfortunes. The younger the sufferer and the more difficult his suffering, the more they liked to hear about it.

Once Sherlock had realized that Pansy had not been talking about some unknown and long-gone boy he himself had no reason to care about ( _a boy supposedly called Jamie Morris—or Jamie Morrison, or Something-else Morris or Morrison, but of course the surname Pansy had been floundering over must actually have been "Moran," while the "something-else" she and her doddering old mother-in-law had been racking what passed for their brains to recall was obviously "Hamish"— which Sherlock had recently discovered, after considerable effort and great resistance from his flatmate, was John's middle name; "Hamish" being also the Scottish form of "James," that accounted for the "Jamie"—the mother's choice, Sherlock recalled, which, since she'd supposedly abandoned her children when her son was only fourteen, undoubtedly explained John's no longer using it; his sister—not otherwise noted for tact—called him "John," so one could conclude that that had in fact been his name before Moran's appearance on the scene; John's father—Sherlock dredged this fact out of a dusty corner of his mind palace, to which he had relegated it as soon as he'd learned it—had also been "John," which perhaps explained Moran's calling his stepson by a different name; odd that "John" was also Moran's own name, but as he seemed to use "Jack," perhaps he had his own reasons for disliking "John" that had nothing to do with either John Watson, senior or junior; however, Moran's distaste for the name could not have run deep, as he also called John "Johnny"—a nickname which Sherlock knew his flatmate reacted to with almost as much revulsion as he did to his middle name—so the act of renaming John might simply have been a way for his stepfather to assert control over another man's son_ )—once Sherlock had realized that Pansy's story had, in fact, concerned someone he cared a great deal about, he'd still felt confident in dismissing the bulk of her tale as little more than a storyteller's exaggeration.

But the word "sadistic," coming from John—who never exaggerated anything concerning himself, and whose ability to tolerate pain was unusually high—brought images to Sherlock's mind that he couldn't brush aside. This man had . . . Sherlock's stomach, which was capable of absorbing without protest tea that had had eyeballs floating in it, clenched painfully at the memory of the things Pansy Briers had said. It was a reaction that only intensified as he continued to listen to the conversation he could no longer make himself even try to shut out.

"Johnny, Johnny!" Moran's voice oozed sympathy. "I didn't _mean_ to kill her! You can't think I _meant_ to! I came that day because I wanted to see _you._ She wouldn't let me visit you in the hospital. The police were asking rather awkward questions about what had happened with the dogs, and she kept saying it wasn't a good time to see you, and altogether it seemed best if I stayed away for a while. So I went back home, and my father took care of things with the police. But then I heard you were getting better, so I wrote to your mother and said I was coming back to her. And she wrote and said I mustn't. She said I made everything too hard, that seeing me would remind her of things she never wanted to have to think of again, that she couldn't bear being around me any more. That's why I came to the house that day—I'd just had her letter; I had to make her see reason. But she wouldn't."

"So you killed her."

"We argued. It got out of hand. It was her own fault, really—she knew she shouldn't make me that angry. It never would have happened if _you'd_ been there, you know; you'd have stopped me, like you always did. But you were out playing your clarinet in that band you liked so much, in spite of everything I'd done to teach you not to be a weakling—"

"I was at a therapy appointment, Jack. I was learning to walk again. You've never had to do that, have you? It isn't for weaklings. Mum was supposed to pick me up afterwards, with the car. I waited for over an hour, but she never showed up. I couldn't call her—our phone was out, she hadn't been able to pay the bill, they cut it off. I took the bus home. I could barely get up the drive—I was still on crutches; they weren't sure I'd ever walk properly again. I let myself into the house. I knew as soon as I stepped in that no one was there. Harry was off with a friend—she and Mum hadn't been getting on, even without you around—and Mum wasn't there. All the way home I'd been telling myself she had just forgotten, or fallen asleep, or lost track of the time somehow—but I couldn't find her anywhere. I went all over the house. It was so quiet. So empty—I'll never forget how empty it felt. And then I saw that note _you_ must have left, you fucking son-of-a-bitch."

"I didn't mean you to find it, Johnny! Not _you._ I left it for the police _,_ so they'd think she'd run off to start a new life and wouldn't ask any more questions, wouldn't go poking around and find out what had happened—"

"Bullshit, Jack. You left it on the kitchen table; of course you knew one of us would find it. You didn't give a shit what that would do to us. I suppose it was a page from the letter she wrote you?"

"Of course."

There was a long pause. When John spoke again, his voice was almost unrecognizable.

"And all these years I've thought she wrote it for us. I thought she'd left because we'd made it too hard for her—because she didn't want to have to argue with Harry anymore, because she couldn't take having to look after the fucking useless cripple I thought I was going to be for the rest of my fucking life, after you and your dogs got through with me."

"I had to leave the note, Johnny. I'm sorry it upset you, but sometimes collateral damage is unavoidable, you know."

"If I could kill you now, you sodding bastard, I would. I should have killed you years ago. I don't know why I didn't. Prison would have been a walk in the park compared to life with you."

"Johnny, my dear boy! _Johnny!_ Don't say things like that! I was a father to you. You couldn't have hurt me; you know you couldn't."

"Oh, couldn't I? I thought about it often enough. Every time you hit Harry. Every time you hit Mum. Every time you threw your dinner on the floor because you didn't like the way she'd cooked it; every time I cleaned it up. Every time you yelled at them, every time you called them ugly names—I wanted to kill you then."

"They needed correction. Your mother was drinking; your sister was out of control—lying, screaming, slipping out at night to cheapen herself with the boys. And then with other _girls._ "

"Every time you hit me. Every time you beat me and that fucking belt buckle cut me. Every time you locked me up in that windowless little hell-hole upstairs—suffocating in summer, freezing in winter, no meals, nothing but a bucket to piss in—I thought about killing you someday."

"Don't whinge, Johnny; I can't stand a whinger. You should be grateful to me. You know I had to brick that window up to keep Harriet from climbing out of it. You know everything I did was for your own good. You had to learn to act like a man. A boy who doesn't learn discipline will always be a boy; a man has to be able to control himself. A soldier has to be able to take a little hunger, a little pain. We learned that at school in my days. But the schools had gone soft; you weren't going to learn it from them anymore. And you were such a scrawny little thing—you needed toughening up."

"Every time you locked me in the pillbox with the dogs."

"They were chained. You had to get over your fear of them."

"I thought about killing you, every time."

"Don't say that, Johnny. Don't you remember what fun we had together? Shooting practice? Stalking? Our wide games in the woods?"

Sherlock could hear John breathing heavily, raggedly. For once, he seemed to have no comeback.

"You know you loved all that, Johnny. You wouldn't be the man you are today if it weren't for me; I taught you everything I knew. You used to beg to go out and play soldiers together. You loved being with me then; you know you did."

"Yeah." John's voice was choked. "Yeah, I did want to be with you then. Before the hitting started, and the shouting, and the locking us up. And before you started setting those fucking dogs on me."

"The dogs? They were just to make things more fun for you, Johnny! You were big enough by then to need more of a challenge—"

"Some fun, running through the woods with those things after you."

"Hare and Hounds—you loved it."

"I hated it, Jack. I hated every fucking second of it, even before they almost tore me apart."

"That was an accident, Johnny! You know I never meant that to happen."

"Like hell you didn't. You think I've forgotten? You set them on Harry; you told them to bring her down. Because she ran away from you—because you'd hit her, because you didn't like the fucking blouse she had on, for Christ's sake!"

"I only slapped her, Johnny. Just a little slap. I only ever slapped her or your mother—you know a man doesn't _hit_ a woman, not with his fist! I just wanted to frighten the little slut, so she wouldn't end up selling herself on the street. I never meant the dogs to hurt either one of you, Johnny. I never wanted to hurt you at all."

"You _always_ wanted to hurt me, Jack. Maybe you regretted it afterwards. Maybe it wasn't really me you were thinking about: maybe it was your father, or one of your teachers, who beat you like their fathers and teachers beat them. Don't look so surprised; I'm a doctor, of course I've worked that out. But whatever they did to you, don't pretend you didn't enjoy taking it out on me. Don't pretend it didn't give you every bit as much satisfaction to beat me shitless as it did to come around later and wash up the cuts and bruises and tell me you'd only done it for my own good. And don't pretend you didn't always want those dogs to get me. I know what your idea of fun was. You made me watch that film with you often enough."

"You wouldn't have been hurt that day if you hadn't gone in after your sister. You shouldn't have done that, Johnny. You should have stayed back and let me handle it."

"Yeah, like the way you handled everything else. If Col. Pettigrew hadn't come along, we'd have both been dead; you were just standing there watching, loving every minute of it. And then you killed Mum. You let us think she'd walked away and left us. None of the rest of it really matters compared to that. You killed her, and you left that note, and if I could get my hands on you, I'd kill you for it now. And it would be slow—painfully slow."

"But you can't get your hands on me, Johnny. You should have been carrying a second weapon. You shouldn't have dropped your gun."

"True. So. What are you going to do with me now?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, I was hoping to make you a little proposition. As I think I said, I have a new job, one that pays really quite remarkably well. I understand you've actually met my employer—though I gather under somewhat less than ideal circumstances. I was hoping to persuade you to put aside whatever animosity that little business at the swimming pool might have caused you to feel towards him, along with your resentments for any mishaps that occurred in the past between the two of us, and come to work for him with me."

"At the _swimming pool?_ You mean _Moriarty?_ "

"Jim Moriarty, yes."

" _He's_ behind all this? _He_ sent you to kill Trevor? To screw up the Olympics? Or was it just one of his nutter games?"

"Not at all. I've gathered by now it was Trevor I hit this morning, rather than Holmes. I still don't entirely understand how that happened, but I fired for the reasons I told you. Jim knew nothing about it—and I would very much prefer that things stay that way. He was certainly thinking about doing something, er, _creative_ to stir up the Olympics—that was why he had me go to that party of Trevor's, to check out the security situation there. But he changed his mind soon afterwards; I don't know why. He's like that—quite changeable. It hasn't hurt him; he's been remarkably successful in his line of work, you know, and he's made it clear that he'd like to have you on board with him. I think you'd find him quite profitable to work for, Johnny. And wouldn't it be grand to be together again, doing things side by side again, working together—"

"You must be out of your fucking head, Jack. Moriarty's a total nut case; he blew up a harmless old lady; he almost blew up Sherlock and me. And _you_ _killed my mother!_ In what universe do you think I'd ever want to do fuck-all with _you?_ "

"Ah, Johnny. I was afraid you'd see things that way. But I wanted to give you the choice. You see, if you're not willing to work with me—if you won't, say, help me get rid of that friend of yours who's locked in the pillbox there, and make Jim happy by coming to work for him—then I'm terribly afraid I'm going to have to get rid of both of you. Permanently, you know."

Sherlock decided that this was probably a good moment for him to join the conversation.

"What good will that do you, Moran?" he called out. "Two more bodies will only make it easier for the police to track you down."

Moran chuckled.

"But there won't _be_ two more bodies," he said. "There won't be any bodies, Holmes. You see, I brought a car full of explosives with me when I drove down this morning. I didn't have a chance to use them then—the temptation to shoot you derailed my plan—but I brought them back with me this evening; they're here right now. You never noticed them behind the pillbox there when you were picking that lock to get into it, did you? Or the gate to the woods being unlocked? I suppose you're responsible for the security cameras being down? Thank you for that; it's been quite helpful. I was just going to shoot them out at the junction box on the house and take my chances on being able to get my little job done before the coppers figured out what had happened. In any case, there won't be anything left of that pillbox or anything in it by the time I'm finished. The explosives are top-of-the-line; even your teeth and bones should be melted past recognition."

"My brother's people can work out more than you think."

Moran laughed again.

"Oh, I don't think so, Holmes. But I'm willing to take a chance on it. I'm afraid you'll be dead, in any case."

And then, unexpectedly, he whistled.

It was a high, piercing sound, a descending fourth followed by a rising fifth. It was followed by the light tap-tap-tap of feet pattering over wet grass—not human feet. And a small sound from John, as if he had sucked in his breath.

"Don't move, Johnny," Moran said. "You know what will happen if you do. I don't fancy going into the pillbox with your friend there, so I'll let the dogs keep you quiet while I take care of things from here."

Sherlock heard a thump overhead, as if something heavy had been thrown on the roof of the pillbox. It was followed by another thump, and then two more.

The explosives.

000000

Sherlock was cursing himself uselessly for not having found a way out of the pillbox before things reached this point, when John cleared his throat.

"That's not very sporting of you, Jack," he said. "Shoot me, and blow Sherlock up—where's the fun in that? I've got a better idea."

A fifth bag hit the roof as Moran answered. "You have, have you?" he said. "What's that, Johnny?"

"The game," John said. "Let's play it again. One more time, for old times' sake. Only this time, let's play it for real."

There was a pregnant pause.

" _The_ game?" Moran said at last, sounding as if he couldn't believe what he'd just heard. "For _real?_ "

" _The_ game," John said, firmly. "For real."

"You'd really do that?" There was eagerness in the man's voice now, as well as disbelief.

"If you'll give me what I want—yes, I will."

"What do you want?"

"Let Sherlock go."

Sherlock could hear the excitement drain out of the older man, like air from a balloon. All the air seemed to have disappeared from Sherlock's lungs, too. What the hell was John doing? He had no right to do anything, not for Sherlock's sake. Sherlock was the one who was supposed to be saving _him._

"Oh, Johnny," Moran sighed. "I can't do _that._ You know I can't. He'd call the police."

"Then you'll have to shoot me now, because I won't play unless you do."

"Oh, Johnny. Now that's really a very unkind thing to do—to make an offer like that, and then take it off the table."

"I'm not taking it off the table, Jack. But that's my offer, and those are my terms. You call yourself a sportsman? Come on, I know you love a gamble—take a chance on this. You don't have to let Sherlock go right away. Leave him shut up here while we play. If I win, you'll let him go—I'll take your word on it. I know you—you'll be able to get yourself away before the coppers show up, and you'll find a way to be all right afterwards. Better than if you kill him—haven't you thought that Moriarty might not be so pleased about that, when he finds out? That's something he wants to do himself, isn't it? In his own time and his own way? No, I don't think he'll be happy with you at all if you kill Sherlock for him. But if I lose tonight—well, then, do whatever you want to him. What do you say?"

"That's . . . a very tempting offer, Johnny."

"Then let's play. I'll give you a good game. The full game. The real thing."

Moran sighed again.

"I'll win, you know," he said, sounding almost regretful. "You're injured already. And you haven't been taking care of yourself—you look like you haven't eaten or slept in weeks. I could give you a clean death now. It's what I should do, really. I suppose I wasn't everything I could have been as a father for you. Maybe I owe you that much."

Sherlock had never believed that anyone could actually feel a chill run down their spine. He'd been wrong, apparently; one was running down his now. What the hell was John offering to do?

"What, you want me to stand here and let you shoot me like a fish in a barrel?" John said. "That's not the kind of man you wanted me to be. I'm stronger than you think, Jack. I'll give you a good game. Come on, you've always wanted this, you know you have—admit it. When will you ever get another chance?"

"All right," Moran said. "I'm in. The usual bounds?"

"The usual bounds."

"But the real game?"

"The real game."

" _All_ of it?"

"All of it."

"If you try to break bounds, I'll set off the explosives. My phone's the detonator."

"I won't break bounds."

"I'll give you fifteen minutes' head start."

"Right."

"Throw me your phone."

Sherlock heard John fumbling to get something out of his pocket. It took longer than it should have, and he swore a little while he was doing it. It was that arm he'd been shot in, then. How badly was it hurt? How much blood had he lost? How much was he still losing? And how long was he going to be able to keep doing whatever it was he'd just agreed to do?

"Here you go," John said, and Sherlock heard the soft slap of John's phone landing in Moran's hand.

"Now yours, Holmes," Moran called out. "You can't get a signal in there, obviously, or the police would be here by now, but I think I'll take it anyway."

" _What are you doing, John?_ " Sherlock hissed, suddenly as furious with his friend as he was with Moran. Bloody idiot, always having to be the hero. " _What is this 'game'?"_

"Don't worry about it, Sherlock," John said. "Just give him your phone."

Sherlock snarled as he tossed the phone out the window. It gave him some savage satisfaction to hear it hit the ground, proving that catch was one game Moran didn't always win at. Maybe he won't win the other one, either, he thought desperately—whatever it might be.

But part of his mind had already formed a pretty clear idea of what the game must be. And the thought of John doing _that_ made, not just his spine, but his whole body and brain freeze.

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	19. Chapter 19

Author's Note: My thanks, as always, to Fang's Fawn for her help, and my apologies for the long delay, to anyone who's been waiting. Reviews would be very welcome; it does help the writing process to know that someone cares.

From Chapter 18:

" _What are you doing, John?" Sherlock hissed, suddenly as furious with his friend as he was with Moran. Bloody idiot, always having to be the hero. "What is this 'game'?"_

" _Don't worry about it, Sherlock," John said. "Just give him your phone."_

 _Sherlock snarled as he tossed the phone out the window. It gave him some savage satisfaction to hear it hit the ground, proving that catch was one game Moran didn't always win at. Maybe he won't win the other one, either, he thought desperately—whatever it might be._

 _But part of his mind had already formed a pretty clear idea of what the game must be. And the thought of John doing_ _ **that**_ _made, not just his spine, but his whole body and brain freeze._

The Empty Home:

Chapter 19:

The gate creaked open.

"Ready," Jack Moran's voice called. "Steady. Go!"

John's feet thudded over the grass. A stopwatch began to tick in Sherlock's brain: 14.59. 14.58. 14.57. . . .

"Are you all right in there?" Moran said, startling Sherlock out of his conscious awareness of the count. "You've got a little while longer; you might as well make yourself comfortable. Fancy a drink?"

And to Sherlock's surprise, a long, slim hand suddenly appeared in the window-slit, holding a flask. The hand was withdrawn at once, too quickly for Sherlock to grab it, but the flask remained on the sill.

"No, thanks," Sherlock said, eyeing the thing suspiciously. Sterling, about 20 centimeters tall, engraved with Moran's initials, it gleamed in the fog-enshrouded moonlight that bathed the outer edge of the window embrasure.

"Oh, go on. It's good whisky. It can't hurt you now. I won't be having any, myself—I need to keep my senses sharp. Johnny was getting better at this, the last few times we played."

"Was he?"

"Oh, yes. Showing much more endurance, thinking much more strategically."

"There's . . . a strategy, then?"

Sherlock had one now. Ride-on mower. Weber barbecue. Gardening supplies. Whatever had taken him so long?

It wasn't a sure thing. It would depend on everything he needed actually being here, in the right quantities and condition; on his ability to make precise measurements under poor lighting and without the right equipment—and on other things he didn't really want to think about. But still, he had something to work with now. A plan. . . .

"Strategy? Of course." Moran sounded surprised. "Wouldn't be much fun if there wasn't, would it? And Johnny _did_ have fun playing it—ever so much fun. You mustn't think he didn't, in spite of what he said."

"At first." It would be best to keep the man talking for now. It was too dark in the bunker to begin doing anything, even checking the supplies. He'd have to get the torch from the grave once Moran was gone.

"We didn't use the dogs at first. They made it more challenging, of course, but Johnny thrived on a challenge. A natural-born soldier, that boy, for all he was so small. You should have seen his face light up whenever I told him he'd done well."

"What happened when he didn't?"

Moran was silent for a moment.

"It was just discipline," he said, eventually. "A man has to discipline his son. Didn't your father discipline you?"

"Not like that," Sherlock said. "I think I'll have some of that whisky now."

"Good idea," Moran said. "Condemned man's entitled to a drink." He pushed the flask farther along the sill. Sherlock unscrewed the cap and sniffed. Macallan 21; no discernable trace of additives. He raised the flask to his lips.

"Good stuff," he said a moment later, pushing the flask back into the window. "Have some yourself. I'm sure a man like you couldn't have a weak head."

"No, no, Holmes. I've got something much better to look forward to."

Sherlock felt his stomach clench again.

"What would that be, exactly?" he asked. "I don't think I've quite grasped what would make this fun."

"Oh, come, Holmes. You're a sportsman. 'The game is on!'—isn't that what you're always saying? And you like your games dangerous, don't you? I've read Johnny's blog—leaping from building to building, hopping into taxicabs with killers, that's your idea of a good time. You shouldn't have any trouble understanding why this is the finest game in the world: it's the most dangerous game."

"The danger seems a bit one-sided. John's unarmed. Don't you think the odds in a good game should be a little more balanced?"

"The balance is in the bargain he made. If he wins, I'll let you go."

"And what does he have to do to win, exactly?"

"Outlast me, of course."

"Is there a timeframe?"

"Till dawn. We could hardly continue playing once people are up and about."

"So an uninjured and armed man chases an injured and unarmed one through the woods with the help of a pack of large dogs for six hours. You consider this balanced how?"

"If he wins, I'll have to give up everything—my reputation, my new job, my identity, even—and go into hiding. That's a lot to have on the line, when I could simply have killed you both off just now, no questions asked."

"And if you win, John gets to do the same thing? Get a new identity? Go into hiding?"

"Ah, Holmes. You're being deliberately obtuse now."

Sherlock's gut knotted so painfully he thought he might actually be sick—and he hadn't even touched the whisky, a dram of which was now residing in the empty, foil-lined cigarette pack in his coat pocket.

"Not what most people would call fair terms," he said, swallowing back the bile and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, as if that would take away the taste of it.

"But they were Johnny's terms. He proposed them himself."

Sherlock had no answer to that. He wanted to smash something, but there was nothing in the little cell-like room that he could afford to break. _Why_ had John brought this on himself, when Moran had offered him more than one alternative? Didn't he realize he couldn't possibly win?

Moran must be in his sixties, it was true; if the "game" had only been between the two of them, John might have had a chance, even in his current condition. But the dogs changed everything.

The old lady's description suggested they were either pure-bred or some mixed-breed variation of the fila brasileiro—the Brazilian mastiff, a breed originally used to hunt down escaped slaves, and so noted for savagery that they were illegal in Britain—though they could, of course, like anything else, be smuggled into the country. With his criminal connections, Moran would have had no difficulty obtaining an illegal dog if he wanted one. If he lived somewhere near Chelmsford, as he'd told Mrs. Hudson, and if he took the dogs outdoors only at night, he might well have been able to avoid their being reported to the police. And Sherlock was sure, from what he had heard, that at least three of the animals had answered Moran's whistle.

Outrunning dogs like that for six hours would be next to impossible, even if John were in top shape. Injured, exhausted even before Sherlock had dragged him out here, it _would_ be impossible _._ And the fate that awaited him when his strength flagged and he could no longer keep running was peculiarly horrifying—and one that John, of all people, had every reason to fear.

Moran had given him a choice. He could have accepted the clean and painless death his stepfather had offered. He could even have chosen to help the man blow up the pillbox, and survived. True, he would have had to sacrifice Sherlock for that, but . . .

Sherlock swallowed hard. The answer to his own question, _why?_ was unavoidable; it settled in his stomach like cold lead. He did not really think he had earned such an act of friendship as John had undertaken tonight.

Sherlock had called John an idiot often enough, but he knew very well that his companion wasn't even close to being that. He was, by any standards other than those of a Holmes, a highly intelligent man. He was also a very experienced army doctor. It was impossible that he hadn't understood his own physical condition and his odds of succeeding at the "game" he had offered to play.

Of course John knew he wasn't going to win. He was allowing his worst enemy to hunt him like an animal through the woods in a terrifying chase that, barring outside intervention, could only end in an agonizing death. There could only be one reason he would do that—to buy Sherlock time.

But how much time would he be able to buy? A fifteen-minute start was nothing. Unless Sherlock could get himself out of the pillbox quite soon, there was every probability that the dogs would catch up with John before long and tear him to pieces.

And the only plan Sherlock had for getting out of the pillbox could take hours to put into place—and might not work at all.

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"Think I'll hav'nother drink," Sherlock said, slurring his words a little.

"By all means." Moran sounded amused. "Help yourself."

Another dram went into the cigarette pack. The role the alcohol would play in his plan was a very small one—he could certainly have managed without it—but the more incapacitated Moran thought him, the better.

Fifteen minutes had never passed so slowly. Sherlock was twitching with the need to get to work, but he couldn't afford to do anything yet, not with Moran waiting just outside the unglazed window and able to hear every move he made. He thought about trying to lure the man into the pillbox and then bashing his head in with one of the shovels as he opened the door, but the sniper was entirely too wary for that to have any hope of success. If he did anything to startle Moran at all, the man would simply detonate the explosives and blow him up.

That, of course, would have one distinct advantage: it would let John get away. John would hear the blast, know what had happened, and realize he was free to break whatever his "bounds" might be—the edge of the woods, most likely—to go for help.

It was a sign, Sherlock supposed, of the difference between them that he wasn't willing to take that step then and there. That bothered him, but he pushed the self-disgust down. John wouldn't thank him for sacrificing himself before he'd even given his other plan a try. The problem was not knowing how long everything was going to take. And trying not to think about what John was putting himself through while he sat here fidgeting and pretending to get drunk.

"What's he like, then?" Moran's voice shook Sherlock out of his introspection. It had a roughness around the edges that Sherlock hadn't heard in it before, almost as if he was the one who'd been drinking.

"What do you mean?" Sherlock said, forgetting to slur his speech in his surprise at the question.

"Johnny, of course. What's he like, now that he's all grown up and a man?"

"You've read his blog. You know."

"But I want to know more. Does he do the cooking and cleaning still?"

"Sometimes," Sherlock said, cautiously, wondering where this was leading.

"That's not a man's job! One thing for a schoolboy to do a little fagging, but an officer shouldn't be anyone's batman."

The man was nothing if not archaic in his vocabulary, Sherlock thought, remembering "fagging" as the public-school practice—eliminated well before his own school days—of making younger boys wait on older ones, and "batmen" as army officer's servants in the old pre-World War I adventure stories he'd consumed as a very small boy.

"John's not my batman," he said.

"Just your fag, eh?"

John would have put a fist into the man's mouth. Sherlock felt an overwhelming desire to do it on John's behalf, even though he'd never cared what people thought the two of them were doing, and, in any other context, wouldn't have cared now.

Since he couldn't reach Moran through the window embrasure, he had to content himself with saying, "Not that, either."

"Oh, go on. You don't expect me to believe _that_ , do you? Tell me," the man lowered his voice to a confidential whisper, "what is it he likes, then? My Johnny—in bed?"

Every nerve in Sherlock's body curled in revulsion—not so much at the question, as at the man who was asking it.

"You'd have to ask John," he said, shortly. "I wouldn't know."

"Ah, Holmes. Real men talk about the women they've had; surely someone like you can talk about his boyfriend, now? When you're so very near your end? I don't _have_ to keep my word, you know—there'll be nothing to _make_ me let you go, even if Johnny manages to hold out till dawn. I'm afraid he isn't going to, though. And how much the end will hurt him—well, that could be up to you, you know."

"How's that?"

"I won't put up with prevarication, Holmes." The veneer of sophisticated amusement was slipping now; Moran's voice rose angrily. "If I ask a question, I expect a truthful answer. In just a few minutes, I'll be off after Johnny. How he dies when the time comes—that could very well depend on you telling the truth now."

"I told you the truth," Sherlock protested. "I'm not sleeping with John. He isn't gay."

" _Liar!_ " A shot rang out. The compression-waves brushed Sherlock's face as the bullet whizzed past; he threw himself to the floor before it ricocheted off the blast wall behind him. "Of course he is! He _must_ be! What else would he be doing this for? And I want to know: _what is it you've done to him, to make him care for you like that?_ "

Christ, Sherlock thought, the man was completely unhinged.

He could think of a whole string of smart-mouthed things to say in reply: "I've never hit him," "I've never lied to him," "I've never locked him up." He had no idea why it suddenly struck him that all of these were not only wildly stupid things to say under the circumstances, but were also, much more importantly, complete and total . . .

 _No, not lies, not really—he hadn't done those things **often** , and he'd never done them because he wanted to **hurt** John—not really, not even at Baskerville—even if he **had** enjoyed watching John whimper then, that was only a little, just a little; it was really nothing like . . . Oh, crap. Oh, Christ. Oh, God. No. . . . _

His throat closed.

" _Tell me!"_ Moran shrieked, enraged. " _TELL ME!_ "

The only words Sherlock could force out were, "I don't know."

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	20. Chapter 20

From Chapter 19:

" _I told you the truth," Sherlock protested. "I'm not sleeping with John. He isn't gay."_

" _Liar!" A shot rang out. The compression-waves brushed Sherlock's face as the bullet whizzed past him; he threw himself to the floor as it ricocheted off the blast wall behind him. "Of course he is! He must be! What else would he be doing this for? And I want to know: what is it you've done to him, to make him care for you like that?"_

 _. . ._

" _Tell me!" Moran shrieked, enraged. "TELL ME!"_

 _The only words Sherlock could force out were, "I don't know."_

Chapter 20:

A furious hail of bullets followed. Sherlock pressed himself against the wall under the window, hoping the ricochets would go on missing him—and maybe even rebound through the window-slot to take out the shooter.

He got his first wish, but not the second. As the volley came to an end, he heard Moran breathing heavily on the other side of the window, the quick, irregular panting of a man who has let his temper fly completely out of control.

A minute passed, then another. Finally, Moran spoke.

"Sorry about that, old chap," he said. "Didn't get you, did I?"

Sherlock kept his mouth shut, wondering if Moran would open the door to see if he was dead. He tensed himself, ready to pounce. But the man was no fool.

"No, of course I didn't," Moran went on, not sounding at all put out about it. "I could have if I'd really wanted to, you know. You'll be on the floor under the window. But I don't need to shoot you. Your time will come soon enough, and Johnny will play a better game if he knows you're still alive."

"How will he know?" Sherlock asked, sarcastically. "He must have heard your gunfire."

He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. If John had heard the shots and thought Sherlock had been hit, he would surely call the game off and save himself. The last thing Sherlock wanted was to call Moran's attention to that idea—if the man realized he'd lost his chance to indulge his sickening idea of sport, there'd be nothing to keep him from blowing the pillbox up, and maybe tracking John down and killing him anyway.

But John wasn't the only one who must have heard the gunfire, Sherlock thought, with a sudden burst of hope. The old ladies next door . . . No, they were probably still in their beds, either too deaf to hear the shots in their sleep, or too muddle-minded to recognize them for what they were and do anything useful, like calling the police, if they actually had been woken up. But the local police who'd been left in charge of the house must have heard Moran's volley. Surely they'd come running down the garden any moment now to see what was happening.

But they should have appeared ten minutes ago, when Moran first fired at John. Why hadn't they? What was taking them so long?

Oh. Of course. Shit. _Fuck,_ in fact.

Sherlock didn't usually indulge in swearing, even in the privacy of his own thoughts: the words were idiotic, inexpressive, and entirely overused by the moronic masses, not to mention being a waste of time and of his brain's precious synapses. But occasionally they came to thought unbidden. This was most likely to happen in those very rare moments when he realized that he had done something seriously stupid.

Like now—or, rather, an hour or so ago, when he and John had crept down the side of the house, and he hadn't been satisfied with simply turning off the outside security cameras and their attendant microphones, but had gone on to re-route the security feed to the screens in the computer room to a re-run of footage from several nights ago, sounds and all. The guards would, like the agent he had watched earlier that day, be using earphones as they watched and listened to those deceptively innocuous scenes on the computers, in that windowless little room in the middle of the house where the security equipment was housed.

They wouldn't have heard a thing that was actually going on outside.

"True," Moran was saying. "I do hope Johnny doesn't take that as an excuse to break bounds. I'd have to blow you up rather sooner than I was planning to, and I'd never get the game in. But I shouldn't worry about it, old chap. Johnny'll know I wouldn't take a kill shot like that. He'll realize that was just me letting off a bit of steam. He knows me quite well, don't y'know?"

"Yes," Sherlock said. "I'm sure he does."

And there it was again, that improbable shudder running down his spine at the thought of what John knew about this man, and how he must have learned it.

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Wet branches slapped at John's face and his feet thudded over the ground as he plunged down the old path towards the river. Moonlight seeped in strange patches through the fog, illuminating his way one moment, distorting and concealing everything around him the next. The path was overgrown and slick with mud, but some kind of muscle memory seemed to keep his feet moving with its rise and fall, helping him miss most of the rocks and roots and slippery places that tried to trip him as he ran.

Most. Two or three times he caught his foot on something and stumbled, but his reflexes were quick and he was able to regain his balance each time without falling.

 _Stay on your feet,_ he told himself. _Don't fall. Keep moving._

Pain stabbed through his arm with every step. He ignored it.

Once he nearly impaled himself on a huge tree limb that had blown down across the path, but he saw it just in time and jumped over it, clearing the limb itself and the branches bristling out of it with a long leap, like a hurdle jumper. The wood was largely a public one and its paths would normally be well maintained, but it had been a cold, wet spring and the trails hadn't been cleared yet after the winter. Trees overhung the path from both sides. Their branches poked angrily at him as he ran, scratching his hands and face, forcing him to squint to avoid losing an eye. But the overgrowth helped, too—moving between patches of darkness and moonlit fog, he could only see a couple of feet ahead of him at best, but the trees and shrubs formed a prickly screen on either side of him that kept him from veering completely off the track.

At least he didn't have to worry about moving quietly or hiding his footsteps. Concealment was useless: the dogs would have no difficulty following his scent here.

 _Stay on your feet. Don't fall. Keep moving._

There'd been a time when he knew every inch of this ground, but not any more. The wood was denser here than he remembered. He wondered how many other changes he was going to find. New trees would have grown up; old ones fallen. Familiar trails might have been abandoned and new ones laid out. Bridges might have been built over the river, or taken down. He might find waterways swollen from the recent rain, or they might have been re-routed, or have dried up altogether.

Moran had been here more recently than John had—this morning, at least, and then earlier this evening. He must have parked at one of the closer entry points and walked through the wood to the back of The Gables. Bringing in all those explosives would have taken more than one trip. He wouldn't have been scouting out the terrain with this game in mind, but he'd been over some of the paths already. That gave him an advantage. And if he ran the dogs here regularly. . . . Which was quite possible. Probable, even; he'd said he'd been keeping an eye on the house for some time. So John had better assume that Moran had a much better knowledge of the terrain than he did.

Another root caught at his feet and tripped him. He stumbled, and lurched sideways; a branch slashed at his bad arm, sending the pain flaming up to engulf him. For a moment he thought he was going to pass out, but he didn't. A few deep breaths helped. Then he forced himself to a run again. He could feel the blood trickling down his arm. He ignored it.

 _Stay on your feet. Don't fall. Keep moving_.

Keep moving, and keep thinking. _Plan, John. Plan._ He had to work out what to do before he got to the river at the foot of the slope. He couldn't afford to waste time on the wrong move once he got there.

The river was a small one—the kind of ancient English waterway that Americans John had known could never believe would actually be dignified with the name "river" at all. Where the trail met it, the water was only a few feet wide and barely a foot deep. Shallow enough to walk in without much difficulty. Deep enough to throw the dogs off his scent.

That made it a lifeline, his best hope. But that lifeline could easily turn into a noose. The dogs couldn't follow a trail though water, but if Moran guessed the right direction to search in, they wouldn't have to—the water would lead them straight to him.

He needed to get into it and then away from it, preferably without leaving any traces of himself at his exit point. The burning question now was which way to go.

He could get farther faster by heading downstream. In that direction, eastwards, the river wound—or had wound, the last time he'd done this—through varied terrain: patches of woodland that opened out into water meadows dotted with copses of willow, alder, birch. If you were careful where you put your feet, you could sometimes play hide and seek among those boggy islets for quite a while, keeping stretches of water between you and the dogs.

On a foggy night like tonight, John might be able to lose Moran for some time there.

It was tempting. But would the terrain be what he remembered? Some of the bigger trees that had given him shelter once might have fallen. Others would have grown larger, but new trees would also have sprung up where there had been empty ground before, in which case he might have trouble finding his way through them in the dark and the fog.

In marshland, that could be disastrous. Once he had known where he could put his feet safely, without getting mired in the mud. Now he couldn't be sure. He didn't fancy the idea of getting stuck in a patch of bog and having to wait like a sitting duck for Moran to show up with the dogs.

And that was assuming the boggy meadows were still there at all. They'd had a cold, wet spring, but following on the heels of so many years of much warmer, drier weather than he'd grown up with, that could mean very little. If he committed himself to that direction and found that climate change had reduced the marshland to little or nothing, then the game would be over very quickly.

The south side of the river had been another frequent choice. A small stream joined the larger waterway just a short distance downstream from the path he was now on. It could be followed up a gentle slope to a ridge, the far side of which was one of the most heavily treed sections of the wood, and was lined with several gullies where other little streams branched off from the first. If he could change course often enough among these rivulets, it had sometimes been possible to find a tree with an overhanging branch and climb up into it, and from there to other trees, without ever setting foot on dry ground.

That had worked quite well at first. Unfortunately, Moran had eventually made note of all the best-placed trees, and had started bringing a torch along to shine up into their branches. His memory of exactly which tree had been where would have dimmed, as John's had, but it could come back to him quickly enough. And it was all too possible that the branches that had once hung so helpfully low over the water would have broken off by now.

The only other choice was upstream. That presented, in many ways, the greatest difficulties of all.

Even in the shallow, slow-moving water of the river, having to wade against the current would slow John down. So would the steeper terrain in that direction, once he had to leave the water—and of course he _did_ have to leave the water, or Moran would find him easily enough.

The southerly ridge on the far side of the river rose as it ran westwards to a knob of land the locals called The Hill. One of the finest houses of the county, Hill Hall, had once stood there, looking out over lawns and gardens to its home farm in the gentle valley that lay to the south, and over more gardens and meadows and the river to the north. The Hall had been destroyed by a fire almost a hundred years ago and had never been rebuilt. It was sold after the war, but the new owners had had no interest in living there; they rented out the former dower house and the farmland, and ignored the ruined house and gardens, which by then had already begun to merge inextricably into the woodland that had for centuries lain around them.

John had explored the ruins of the house and garden extensively when he was younger, both on his own and with other local boys, but he had only sought shelter there during one of his earliest "games" with Moran. His nightmares after Baskerville had taken him back to that night almost as often as they had to the afternoon when Moran had insisted on taking the family picnicking there, and Harry had taken her jumper off to sunbathe in a blouse her stepfather hadn't approved of—the day Moran had set the dogs after her, not with the commands he usually used when tracking John—"find" and "hold"—but the one he had always before reserved for hunting rabbits, fox, or badger—"kill."

If Moran thought John would act as he always had in the past, then he'd expect him to choose any direction other than Hill Hall.

But was that what Moran would be thinking? John was older now, and much more experienced—as a doctor, as a soldier, and as Sherlock's companion on more than one hair-raising adventure. Would Moran take that into account? Would he be thinking of his former stepson as the boy he'd once been, or as the man he'd become?

Everything depended on the answer to that question, but John had no idea what Moran might do. Only one thing seemed sure: the man would be thinking he had all the best cards. He was older, but he was fit. He was uninjured. He was armed. And he had the dogs.

John had—what? Fatigue. An injury. No weapon. Nothing to help him; no one to back him up.

Except Sherlock. Who was, of course, locked in an army bunker that John knew from experience was impossible to get out of. And yet. . . .

He knew Sherlock; Moran didn't. Moran would leave Sherlock alone in the pillbox when he left to hunt John. It was always a mistake to leave Sherlock alone, if there was something you didn't want him to do—and it was a mistake Moran was about to make.

John's breathing was laboured, his chest heaving as he pounded down the path, but the corner of his mouth twitched up a little in spite of himself. Really, his faith in his flatmate's genius was ridiculous. But he had it, all the same. If anyone could think of a way out of that pillbox, it was Sherlock. If John could just give him enough time.

Those were two very big "ifs". Part of John knew he was telling himself a story—that this time they had probably run into the kind of trouble even Sherlock couldn't get them out of. But he needed to believe in something, if he was going to keep going, and Sherlock was all he had. It was a good thing Sherlock was so strangely easy to believe in.

 _Stay on your feet. Don't fall. Keep moving._

By the time John reached the river, he'd made up his mind what to do. He plunged into the water and started wading downstream.

Then he heard the shots.

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	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

From the beginning of Chapter 20:

 _A furious hail of bullets followed. Sherlock pressed himself against the wall under the window, hoping the ricochets would go on missing him—and maybe even rebound through the window-slot to take out the shooter._

 _He got his first wish, but not the second. As the volley came to an end, he heard Moran breathing heavily on the other side of the window, the quick, irregular panting of a man who has let his temper fly completely out of control._

Chapter 21:

 _1:05 a.m._

"Want another drink?" Moran's voice was as calm now as it had been just a few minutes earlier, before he let loose with that volley of gunfire.

"No, thanks." The cigarette pack in Sherlock's pocket was full. The role of the alcohol in his plan was a minor one, in any case—not really essential.

"Right. Johnny's lead time is up, so I'll be off then. Cheerio!" Moran whistled, and Sherlock heard the sounds of large and small feet moving over wet grass as Moran walked quickly away, followed by his dogs.

He was across the room and behind the blast wall before they were through the gate, throwing himself down on his stomach to fish in the shallow grave for the torch John had dropped, moving in three quick strides back to the front of the pillbox, crouching beside the gardening supplies, opening bags and unscrewing the tops of plastic jugs and bottles to see if what he needed for his plan was there or not.

000000

 _1:10 a.m._

Mycroft Holmes liked his comforts. His job was a stressful one, and he found it helpful to be able to leave his bunker-like office behind at the end of a long day and retreat to a place of quiet, calm, and civilized elegance—to eat a well-prepared meal served at a table properly laid with good china and silver, to enjoy a glass of fine scotch by the fire afterwards, to drop off to sleep on a bespoke mattress, between 800-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, under an eiderdown and silk quilt.

This day had been a particularly stressful one, following on the heels of several unusually stressful and tiring weeks. The upcoming Olympics were straining the resources of even his department: the threats against the recently appointed Minister in charge of them had been only one tip of several very large icebergs that had been looming over Mycroft's days and, often, nights; his staff, like Mycroft himself, had been stretched to their limits and beyond in attempting to keep watch over all the developments and potential developments that might pose a threat to the stability and security of Her Majesty's Government and the peace and prosperity of the nation—which, of course, depended on that of Europe as well.

The report, some thirty-odd hours ago, that the London home of the Secretary of State for Media, Culture, Sport, and the Olympics had been broken into had set off an even-greater frenzy of activity in Mycroft's world, a frenzy that had, of course, surged to an absolute tsunami when the news arrived that, in spite of the extensive precautions that should have secured the Minister, the man had been found shot dead in a locked and windowless room in his country home. Mycroft's job involved always suspecting and anticipating the worst. Right now, that meant having to prepare for the possibility that the nation's security forces had been infiltrated, and the Prime Minister and possibly even the Queen herself were at risk.

So, at a little after 1:00 in the morning of (technically) the day after Victor Trevor's murder, Mycroft was still in his office, sitting with his head tipped back against the wall behind his desk and allowing himself just five minutes in which to close his eyes and contemplate the fact that he could not actually remember when he had last been home, or anticipate when he would again eat at his own table or sleep in that profoundly comfortable bed. He had been quite certain that he could do this and not fall asleep. But there was no denying the unpleasant sensation of being dragged up from some deep, watery place of sub-consciousness that accompanied the familiar sound of someone knocking on his office door.

"Come in," Mycroft said, sitting up abruptly. It was distressing to hear the syllables emerge with less than their usual precision, so the command sounded more like "C'm'n" than any recognizable English phrase. His mouth felt dry. Was it possible he had fallen asleep with it _open?_

He ran a hand over his face to make sure no unpleasant bodily fluids had dried on his chin. He needed to shave. The knock came again.

"Come _in!_ " he called sharply. Nothing wrong with his diction there. The door opened a little; the face that peered around it looked distinctly worried.

"Mr. Holmes?" a voice asked nervously. Gregory Bates, one of the youngest and newest of his staff.

"Yes, Bates. Come _in._ " _Don't just stand there gaping like a fish on a stone slab,_ Mycroft wanted to add, but, exhausted and snappish though he felt, he restrained himself.

The young man—barely out of university, Mycroft recalled—sidled in. His worried expression deepened.

"Um, er," he began.

"Yes, Bates?"

"Um, sir. I, er, well, sir . . ."

This was intolerable.

"Don't waste my time, Bates." Mycroft's voice was silky. The young man's eyes widened.

"No, sir. I'm sorry, sir. It's just—you know how busy we've been. We had to pull half the staff off their regular jobs to work on the Astor Mews business, and then the Minister's murder today—"

" _Bates._ "

"Yes, sir," Bates said, hastily. "Sorry, sir. It's just—Williams just told me about something on the security footage from Baker Street last night. He didn't mention it before because, with everything else—"

"Are you saying _,_ " Mycroft demanded, "that there has been an incident at my brother's flat and the agent in charge of monitoring security there _failed to alert me?_ "

"No, sir, not an incident, precisely, and it wasn't really at your brother's flat—it's on the feed from the landlady's kitchen in the flat downstairs. Williams didn't think it was worth troubling you with, when you're so busy. But I thought you'd want to know, so—"

" _Indeed,_ " Mycroft snapped, turning to his computer and hitting with furious precision the keys that would bring up the security-camera recordings for 221A. "What time did this _non-incident_ occur?"

His voice dripped acid. The boy—he really was barely out of short trousers, Mycroft thought—

looked more frightened than ever as he answered.

"At 1:07:33 last night, sir."

His mouth a very thin line, Mycroft found the place and watched.

" _Look after her, Mycroft,_ " Sherlock growled at him from the screen. " _And if you don't find out who this Jack is and what he wants with John and me, I'll tell Mummy—"_

Mycroft hit the "mute" button. Then he rewound the video until he found a halfway-clear shot of Mrs. Hudson's visitor. He studied the picture intently. The face was a familiar type—long, lean, good-looking, decidedly Anglo-Saxon, probably upper class.

"Have you identified this man?"

"Not yet, sir. Do you want me to stop working on the tapes from The Gables and do this instead?"

Mycroft pursed his lips and considered this.

"No," he said, after a moment. "Neither my brother nor Dr. Watson is at home at the moment. They shouldn't be in any danger where they are now. But get one of the assistants onto it first thing in the morning. I want to know who this man is, and why he took such an interest in my brother and his flat."

"Yes, sir." The boy's face relaxed a little, and he stepped back towards the door.

"Oh, and Bates?"

"Yes, sir?" The boy tensed again.

Mycroft paused. He badly wanted to say, "Tell Williams to clean out his desk." But they were short-staffed as it was, and Williams was usually thoroughly dependable.

"Thank you," he said instead. Bates' face lit up. There was a spring in his step as he left the room that made Mycroft suspect he would work all night now with more energy and determination than if he'd just woken up from a week's good sleep.

It was remarkable what a motivator a little judiciously timed praise or a word of thanks could be, the older Holmes brother thought, smiling grimly to himself as he bent over his computer and reapplied himself to the pressing task of making sure that the P.M. and the Royal Family were secure.

000000

 _1:12 a.m._

About the time that Mycroft was being woken from his brief nap, Harry Watson woke up from a much longer one. She had, in fact, been napping on and off all day on the sofa in Mrs. Hudson's sitting room, John having asked Mrs. Hudson to wake her every two hours to check that she was still coherent and not showing any signs of previously undetected bleeding on the brain, but otherwise to let her sleep as much as she wanted to.

Now she felt wide awake. After lying still for a while, blinking at the shadowy ceiling and thinking about how nice it would be to be able to go back to sleep and forget about all the bits of her that were starting to ache and throb again, she realized she was thirsty and needed to go to the loo, so she got up—carefully, as her head was still inclined to swim if she changed position suddenly. Coming back from the loo, she was surprised to see a line of light underscoring the door to the kitchen. She opened the door to investigate, and found her hostess there before her, wrapped in a dressing-gown and warming a pan of milk on the cooktop.

"I'm sorry," Harry said—it was a phrase that came much more naturally to her when she wasn't talking to her brother. "Did I wake you?"

"Not at all, dear," Mrs. Hudson said, brightly. "I'm often up late at night. How are you feeling now?"

"Better than before," Harry said. "But not at all sleepy anymore, I'm afraid. I'm terribly sorry—I shouldn't have slept all day like that. It must have been a frightful nuisance for you, having me sacked out on your sofa for so long."

"Nonsense, dear. It was no trouble at all. And you needed to sleep. John said it would be the best thing for you."

"Did he?"

"Yes, dear. I'm sorry I had to keep waking you up. He asked me to, you know—he was quite concerned about making sure you were all right."

"Was he?" Harry said. "That's . . . nice."

She felt tears start to burn behind her eyes and her face flame in response to them. _Oh, dear,_ she thought, blinking madly to keep them back. _What's the matter with me? I don't usually get like this. She'll think I'm a basket-case!_

Mrs. Hudson looked at her sharply, her own eyes bright with unasked questions. It had not escaped her notice that John's sister lived in London but never came to visit, even at Christmas.

But all she said was, "Yes, of course he was. Now, what about some nice, warm milk? Or a spot of Ovaltine?"

"That would be lovely," Harry said, with a sniffle—and then, to her complete mortification, the tap seemed to push itself on full and the tears poured down her face, heedless of her desperate efforts to stop them.

Mrs. Hudson pushed the pan off the burner and was by her side in a moment, putting her arms around the younger woman and pulling her in tight.

"I'm sorry," Harry gasped again. "I'm so _sorry!_ This must be the concussion talking, or the painkillers, or something. I don't usually get like this, I don't, _really!_ "

"Of course you don't," Mrs. Hudson agreed, although she'd only met Harry once, briefly, before this morning.

"It's just—John—and you—everyone's being so _kind,_ and it's been so _long,_ and . . . and . . ." And it really must have been the concussion or the painkillers that were loosening her tongue, because Harry found herself blurting out what she had never, _ever_ said to anyone, not Ella, not Clara, "And my mother used to make it, Ovaltine, on the stove like that,—when Daddy was still alive, before he was killed in the war, and before _him,_ that _terrible_ man _,_ and . . ." She broke off into incoherent sobbing.

Mrs. Hudson tightened her arm around Harry's shoulders.

"Sit down, dear," she said, kindly but firmly. "And stop crying."

"I'm sorry!" Harry gasped. "I'm sorry!"

"It's quite all right, dear. But I'm afraid it's not going to do your poor head any good, or that broken nose. Now, I'm going to tuck this blanket around you, and get you some slippers so you don't catch cold on top of everything else—isn't it a good thing we're much the same size?—and I'll finish heating up this milk so we can both get warmed up, and then, when you're feeling a little better, you can tell me all about it."

Harry let out a sort of strangled half-laugh, half sob.

" _All_ about it?" she said, through the tears that were still flowing. "A sweet old woman like you wouldn't really want to know all about it."

Martha Hudson turned and gave Harry such a long, piercing look that the younger woman suddenly found her tears drying up and her face flushing again with an entirely different kind of embarrassment.

"Oh, God," she said, flustered. "I'm so _sorry!_ What a terrible thing to say. I didn't mean—I don't really think of you as—you're not—"

"My dear girl," Mrs. Hudson said, "I am certainly an old woman in the eyes of someone your age, but it's always a mistake to judge from appearances. I've never been sweet. I worked as a stripper once. I was married to a drug dealer. I rejoiced when Sherlock got him executed. Whatever you have to tell me might distress me, on your account, but it isn't going to kill me with the shock of learning that terrible things sometimes happen in a world I imagined was all sweetness and light."

Half an hour later, though, Mrs. Hudson was beginning to think that she had not told Harry the absolute truth. Some things, it seemed, really _were_ still capable of shocking her, especially when they had happened to someone she cared about very much and had thought she knew quite well.

000000

 _1:12 a.m._

Sherlock sat back on his heels and looked over the array of jugs and bottles in front of him, his teeth set grimly. Nothing. _Nothing._ He'd been so sure. But the petrol tank of the ride-on mower was empty, and so were all the containers that might once have held its fuel.

No diesel. None. He ran a hand through his hair and tried to swallow back his frustration.

" _Nothing_ " was inaccurate. He had found, as he had hoped, a partial bag of powdered potassium nitrate and another of sulfur. The saltpetre had probably been used as fertilizer or stump remover, the sulfur to lower the pH level in the flowerbeds, so the hydrangeas would produce blue blossoms instead of pink ones and the garden wouldn't smell of manure. (Sherlock had grown up in the country, with a father who was fond of gardening.)

He'd even found charcoal, in the form of briquettes for the barbecue. He had in front of him, in theory, all the ingredients for black powder, though whether he could actually make gunpowder that would go off properly from charcoal of that low a grade, he wasn't sure at all. He'd never had to do it before. He hadn't been the kind of child who fooled around with whatever was at hand; his experiments had always been conducted using top-quality ingredients ordered from pharmacies or professional laboratory-supply stores, and paid for out of his pocket money—or whatever he'd been able to extract from Mycroft. It had never occurred to his demanding and perfectionist mind to approach science in any other way.

If he could find something to use as a mortar and pestle, he might be able to crush the charcoal down to a finer powder—but no, it would clump if he tried that, especially in this damp atmosphere. A file would be better. But it would take time. And to produce the kind of explosion he needed without being able to mix fertilizer with diesel, he would have to grind a considerable amount of charcoal and mix up a substantial amount of black powder—much larger than he'd been expecting to have to make. He would also have to measure the quantities quite precisely, which meant finding a way to weigh them. That was doable—he could make a simple balance scale—but he would only be able to weigh out very small batches at a time.

 _Time—_ that was the key, the crucial thing. This was all going to take so much more _time_ than he'd thought. And while he was scraping and weighing and measuring and mixing, John would be running and worrying and _hurting—_ there was no way that a bullet wound could not be causing him pain. He would also, very possibly, be still bleeding.

Sherlock had no illusions about the certainty of even the most expertly applied first-aid being able to manage blood loss from anything but the most minor of gunshot wounds for any extended period of time. It was possible that Moran's bullet had only grazed John's arm. It was more likely that the wound was more serious than that. John was as expert in treating bullet wounds as any man could be, but he would not be able to do much for himself while having to work one-handed on an injury to his dominant arm, even if he had all the time and supplies in the world. As things were, he wouldn't be able to treat himself properly at all while on the run. If the wound was anything worse than the most superficial scratch, both the pain and the bleeding might soon become impossible to manage, and John would grow weaker with every minute.

Sherlock needed to get out of this blasted box _now,_ not after two or three hours mucking about like a toddler making mudpies or some idiot schoolboy trying to build a rocket out of things he'd found in the kitchen cupboard.

But there was no diesel. He had no choice. He picked up one of the charcoal briquettes and began to scrape it with concentrated fury against the rough places where one of the steel bars was welded to a cross bar on the barbecue's grill. His organized mind had already reviewed the entire contents of the pillbox and determined that this was the closest thing he was going to find to a file.

000000

 _A few minutes earlier (1:05 a.m.):_

The sound of gunfire stopped John in his tracks _._ His vision blurred. He couldn't breathe.

 _Sherlock,_ he thought. _He's shot Sherlock._ Images of his friend ran across his mind, like stills from an old movie reel: scenes from every case they'd worked together, from all those less hectic evenings spent reading in companionable silence by the fire at 221B, from every time Sherlock had dragged them to a restaurant so John could eat while Sherlock fasted or played with his food. . . .

When the volley of shots ended, John was bent over, hands on his knees, chest heaving as his body took over and forced the air into his lungs, whether he wanted it there or not.

With the air came more clarity of thought. Memories much older than those of Sherlock surfaced: Moran smashing every dish in the cupboard, because one had been put back with a little food still stuck to it. Moran starting a beating with the cool detachment of an old-school headmaster meting out the designated strokes of a calmly decreed punishment, and ending by piling lash on bloody lash in a vicious rage, when John wouldn't back down and agree to whatever ludicrous claim had started the whole business in the first place. Moran shooting wildly at one of his dogs when it was still a pup and hadn't obeyed his call to come—and missing every time, because the brilliant marksman was too enraged to be able to shoot straight at a frightened dog.

All those shots just now suggested anger, not a sniper's controlled precision. If Moran had fired them at Sherlock, he could easily have missed. He'd have let loose in a rage; he'd have to shoot through the window; Sherlock would have dropped to the floor and rolled out of the way.

Everything would be fine. Unless . . . Unless Moran had opened the door and fired through that. Sherlock might have tricked him into opening it and then tried to jump him; that would be just like Sherlock. And it would be more than enough to infuriate Moran and set him off. He might have been shooting wildly, but under those circumstances, he could hardly have missed.

A deep, rolling, sick sensation in his gut told John that this was all his fault. He should have warned Sherlock not to try anything until Moran left. He had no idea how he could have done that—yelling "Vatican Cameos!" would have made Moran wonder what John was up to, and might easily have resulted in his blowing up the pillbox then and there—but he should have thought of _something,_ should at least have tried. Even Sherlock, brilliant deductive genius though he was, could not have known what kind of man he was dealing with—not the way John knew. But John hadn't warned him.

 _It might not have happened,_ John thought, desperately. _He might have been firing through the window. Or at someone else—or some_ thing _else. Maybe one of the dogs set him off again. Sherlock could still be alive. He could be planning his escape right now._

If there was even the slightest chance of it, John had to keep going. Giving up wasn't an option, not when getting caught breaking bounds would mean Moran blowing up the pillbox and a possibly still living Sherlock with it.

John took another deep, ragged breath, unbent himself, and started moving again. _Sherlock's still alive,_ he told himself. _He's alive, and he's going to find a way out of there. Believe that. Believe it. Believe it._

But the irrational hope that had sustained him in his race down the hillside was gone. His heart was heavy. His legs felt like lead. He was walking downstream and the water didn't even reach his knees, but he felt as if he were pushing against great walls of it rushing towards him with implacable force.

000000

A.N.: My thanks are due to my husband for parts of this one, as well as to Fang's Fawn, for her very helpful feedback.


	22. Chapter 22

_It might not have happened, John thought, desperately. He might have been firing through the window. . . . Sherlock could still be alive. He could be planning his escape right now. . . .Believe that. Believe it. Believe it._

 _But the irrational hope that had sustained him in his race down the hillside was gone. His heart was heavy. His legs felt like lead. He was walking downstream and the water didn't even reach his knees, but he felt as if he were pushing against great walls of it rushing towards him with implacable force._

Chapter 22:

The water was shockingly cold, the bottom treacherous and full of hazards: rounded rocks slick with mud and dead leaves that made him slip, jagged rocks that jabbed and cut at his feet and ankles and tripped him up, unsteady rocks that lurched suddenly when he put his weight on them and threw him off balance, threatening to bring him down. The sturdy crepe soles of his shoes were both a help and a hindrance, protecting him from the worst of the cuts and providing at least some grip, but also making it harder to feel his way along.

The fog was heavier over the water, the cover of branches overhead thinner, letting more moonlight through. The result was a pearlescent haze so thick and dense John thought he would probably have been able to see more clearly if there'd been no moon at all. Droplets ran chillingly down the back of his neck and filled his nose and lungs, tickling them and making him cough. He'd have to suppress that later; right now, it didn't matter.

He stuck close to the right-hand—the south—side of the river. The night was eerily still, the quiet (since that terrible burst of gunfire he was trying not to think about) broken only by the rustle of the stream running over its rocky bottom, the splashing of his feet through the water, and the sound of his own rough coughs and heavy breathing. The water deepened unexpectedly and he stumbled, almost putting a hand down on the bank but saving himself just in time.

He'd be safer in the middle of the river. But he couldn't afford to go there yet. He didn't want to miss the place he was looking for.

He started moving again. Time was ticking away—not much time, not yet, but he didn't have any to waste. How far had he come? Had he passed the place already?

He stopped moving and stood still, straining with every sense he had for something, _anything,_ that would give him some clue to where he was and what was around him. He caught it then, just ahead of him—the ridiculously cheerful burbling of a tiny stream.

A few seconds later, he was at its mouth. A faint, sweet scent surrounded him, one that almost took his breath away with the memories it brought with it. Bluebells. Of course—this part of the ancient, coppiced wood had always been carpeted with them at this time of year.

The thought of all that hidden beauty around him was oddly buoying. Somewhere a nightingale began to sing. The whole scene was absurdly peaceful, the quintessence of an English country night in early spring. Though the nightingale, he remembered from some distant school lesson, was a symbol of violence as well as beauty—hadn't Philomela been turned into the bird after having her tongue cut out by her sister's husband?

Where the stream met the river, the branches of a low-hanging willow on the east bank brushed his face. He stopped. This was as good a place as any.

He pressed his left hand firmly down on the bank, making himself do it in spite of the flare of pain the pressure sent up his already angrily-throbbing left arm. The bandages and blood from the cut he'd given himself earlier that evening would leave a good, strong scent for the dogs to find, on top of his own. He followed that up by shaking the overhanging branch until a few small leaves and twigs fluttered down, hoping to create the illusion that he'd slipped in the stream, grabbed at the branch to keep himself from falling, and fallen anyway, catching himself with one hand on the bank. Then he smoothed the whole area over until the visible traces he'd just created were almost, but not quite, eliminated. Moran would expect him to have tried to brush away any spoor he'd accidentally created, but wouldn't be surprised that in his haste he hadn't quite succeeded.

The false trail had taken him a little over a minute to lay. If Moran ran the dogs that way at all, they'd find it, and Moran would think he'd gone in either of two directions—south along the tributary, or east along the river, downstream. Unless, of course, he guessed what John had been trying to do. In that case, things would be over very quickly, but John couldn't take the time to worry about it.

He turned around and started wading in the opposite direction. Half a mile upstream his ears caught a sound, faint and muffled by the fog, that made every hair on his skin rise: a man's shrill whistle.

So, his fifteen minutes were up, and Moran was in the wood. He would have to move very quietly now. The fog would give him a little extra cover—most sounds should be muffled by it—but you could never be sure, and he didn't want to count on it.

He didn't want to leave any trace of himself on the bank, either, so he stayed in the middle of the narrow stream. Even in such shallow water, it was hard walking against the current, and the upward lilt of the land didn't help. Not long after hearing Moran whistling to his dogs, John came to a little waterfall and had to scramble up the slippery rocks more or less one-handed in the dark. A few hundred yards later there was another. He almost slipped and fell backwards that time. Only a desperate effort to force his injured arm into use saved him, but it left him breathless and dizzy from the pain.

He couldn't remember if there were any more of the little falls between him and his destination. He wasn't sure he could manage another. His feet were starting to go numb with the cold. He was stumbling more often. He began to wonder if it wouldn't be better to get out of the water; he might be able to make better time on land. But the water was the only cover he had; he was reluctant to give it up. If Moran started the dogs in that direction and they couldn't catch his scent, there was always the possibility that the man might give up after a bit and turn back to look in another direction. Once the dogs picked up his scent, they'd be on him in no time. And he couldn't remember any path along the river here. Getting lost in the woods would only slow him down more.

He decided to stay in the water just a little longer. And then just a little longer after that.

Another waterfall. Like the others, it was so small it really hardly rated the word—only four or five feet high, at most—but it looked like Kanchenjunga to John at that point. He gritted his teeth, forced his left arm into action, and made it to the top. His head still spinning, he staggered a few steps farther and nearly impaled himself on a screen of prickly branches that, he found after a little fumbling investigation, belonged to a big tree which had fallen right across the river.

Would it be better to leave the water now, or not? He still thought not. He couldn't see the tree's ends, but they seemed to be resting on the banks. He moved to the side with the fewest protruding branches and tested it for stability by putting as much weight on it as he could and trying to rock it. It felt pretty steady, so he threw a leg over it and started to ease the rest of his body across.

He was almost over when something shifted and gave way. John fell forward with a splash. There was a terrific squawking and thumping of wings as a big bird went up—he must have come down near its nest—but John barely noticed that because he'd fallen on his left side, knocking his injured arm against a rock, and because the log rolled and fell with him, its whole weight coming down across the backs of his legs with bruising force and pinning him face-down in the water.

For a moment he almost passed out. But the need to keep breathing was a reflex that couldn't be denied. Lungs filling up, fireworks exploding along his arm and one of his legs and behind his eyes, he struggled to get his head above water and found he couldn't—he was snared in the reeds and water lilies that had grown up behind the tree.

Unreasoning panic seized him then, and he fought wildly to push himself up through the vegetation and get his head free. He couldn't do it. He was blacking out, seeing strange bursts of colour and light, but still struggling to hold himself up off the bottom with his tortured left arm and push the clinging stalks and leaves away with his right. It wasn't working. He was trapped. He was going to die here, like this, and—

A sudden burst of cold, clear air hit his face and lungs. His head had come free. Gasping, spluttering, coughing up water, each breath agonizing but wonderful—for a while that was all he was conscious of.

Gradually, though, his lungs cleared and his mind began to function again. He was suddenly overwhelmed by his own senses—the moonlight shimmering in the fog on the water nearly blinded him with its brightness; the pungent smells around him—river water, lilies, decaying reeds, mud—seemed as overpoweringly sweet as a beautiful woman's perfume.

He was alive. It was amazing.

But the smell of flowers, moisture, and decay brought back memories with it, too. The pillbox. His mother's body—an image that would have brought him to his knees again with horror and grief, if he hadn't been down on them, his legs pinned under the log, already. It was almost a good thing that he had no time to dwell on those thoughts. He remembered the bird going up when he fell and wondered if Moran had heard it and known what it meant. He had to get out of here, fast.

Bit by agonizing bit, he managed to drag first one leg and then the other out from under the log. Then, almost as painfully, he pulled himself off his knees and—reeds and lilies still clinging to him and seeming to be actually trying to keep him down—back onto his feet again.

His left foot first. That hurt a bit, but it was fine. Then his right. He knew even as he was working that leg out from under the log that it wasn't going to be fine. He got it under him and put some weight on it, but was unsurprised when the knee buckled painfully. If he hadn't been expecting it, he would have fallen.

 _Great_ , he thought, as he shifted his weight to balance on his other leg. _Just great_. A quick pat-down told him he hadn't broken anything, but his right knee was bruised and already swelling; he might have torn a ligament. _Brilliant, John; that was really brilliant._ But there was nothing he could do about it now.

He reached back to the log and found a branch he could break off to use as a cane. Then he struggled through the reeds to the south bank. Land or water wasn't a choice anymore; he'd never be able to keep his balance on the slippery rocks of the river bottom now.

He pulled himself out of the water and sat on the bank, breathing heavily. It had been a struggle, just climbing out. With only one good hand to work with, it was another struggle even to get his army knife out of his pocket and open—he had to use his teeth—but that would have been just as much of a problem before he'd bashed up his knee. He felt dizzy and weak. He'd been shot, for God's sake; what the fucking hell had ever made him think he could—no, shut the door on that thought; he couldn't afford to go there. He _had_ to do this. He _had_ to be able to keep going, had to be able to buy Sherlock time.

He used the knife to cut his trouser leg off just above the knee and then slit the fabric into strips. Two were enough to wrap up the knee. The third and fourth he bandaged as tightly as he dared around his upper arm, right over his jacket sleeve, which was sticky with new blood. There wasn't time to do anything more. He put the remaining strips in his pocket, thinking that he really would have to stop knocking that arm into things; banging a bullet wound about wasn't any way to help yourself at all.

As he got to his feet, John saw with a leap of joy that fate had decided to send one small glimmer of a smile his way at last. He was standing on a patch of firmly packed bare ground that stretched away in both directions through the fog. It was clearly man-made, a walking trail or bridle path along the riverbank that hadn't existed twenty-odd years ago. This must be part of a proper conservation area now. There was a rail fence on the far side of the path, and a sign on a post that warned, "Danger! Stay on Trails!"

Smiling grimly, John picked up his stick and limped along the path. He had no intention of staying on the trails for very long. The danger off them was what he'd come all this way for; it was good to know he was getting close to it at last, even though his stomach curled in dread at what he was thinking of doing.

The trail-builders had done a good job: there were no stones to slip on or roots to trip John up on the river-side path. Even so, he found it hard slogging, and wondered more than once if he was actually going to make it to the place he was aiming for.

In the fog, he almost didn't see the old stone bridge until it was right in front of him. Gripping his stick tightly, John slipped and slithered his way down the bank and waded carefully into the water again.

Under the bridge, set in the pier on the south bank, was the arch of an ancient culvert. About two and a half feet stood above the water line; the same amount, John knew, lay below. Across the opening, as he'd been expecting, was a wire mesh. Although he'd been more or less expecting this, too, he still felt a surge of disappointment when he saw the state of the screws holding it in place—they were rusted firmly shut.

He tugged on the mesh to see if by any chance the bad screws were a blind, but they weren't. So modern youth really was as different from the boys—and some of the girls-he'd known twenty or thirty years ago as everyone claimed. The internet, probably, or video games, or some such rot. But there wasn't any time for thinking about that. One route was out; the others probably would be, too. He'd have to come up with another plan.

He picked up his stick and made his way precariously to the upstream side of the bridge and then a few yards beyond. He would have liked to have kept to the water much longer, but he couldn't risk incapacitating himself further by another fall, so he pulled himself out of the water on the north side. There was no trail here, but the trees had some space between them, which another flood of bluebells had filled in underfoot. His path would be obvious if Moran found it, but he hoped Moran would be less likely to look on this bank than the other. He could follow the line of the river westwards for a few hundred yards or so, and then, if he was very careful not to slip, wade back across the river to the side he really wanted to be on. It was a long shot to hope that the detour would help, but long shots were all he had at this point.

He'd only taken a few steps along the river bank when he heard a sound that made him freeze. Straining to listen, he caught it again: a faint shuffling noise in the trees just a little way downstream. Someone—or something, or a pack of somethings—was coming through the north wood towards him.

So, this was it, then. He'd gambled and lost. There was no time to get back to the other side, no place to hide. Heart pounding, every sense on alert, John clutched his stick—a pathetic excuse for a weapon—and stood behind the nearest tree, waiting.

Everything seemed to come into focus then, very clear and crisp. Perhaps there was a little hope still—not much, and not what most people would have called hope, but better than nothing. It was possible, his adrenalin-fueled mind thought coolly, that the dogs wouldn't catch his scent at first, masked as it was by the bluebells and all the other smells along the edge of the water. If they didn't get to him right away, he could try to take Moran by surprise, jump on him and knock him down. The dogs would be on him at once after that, but if John could force himself to work through the pain, there was just a chance that he might be able to get to Moran's phone before he was finished. If he could get the phone away from Moran and into the water, Moran wouldn't be able to use it to blow up the pillbox even if he managed to fish it out again.

That was it, then—his mission. Get the phone and get it into the water before the dogs had finished with him. Nothing else mattered. Pain was irrelevant. _Focus, John, focus. You can do it if you just stay focused._

He knew that was probably a lie, but it was all he had. The shuffling noises were coming closer. John caught his breath, waiting for the great beasts to emerge out of the fog and hurl themselves at him. He could hear footfalls too, now, and a faint huffing, wheezing sound, as if Moran was out of breath.

He gripped his stick and prepared to strike.

" _Moonwort come, hide no more,"_ a wheezing voice mumbled _._ " _Unshoe the horse, unlock the door. Blend with suet, honey, sage—"_

John blinked, and slowly lowered his weapon. The old woman creeping along the edge of the wood looked up, saw him, and shrieked in fear.

"Shhh," he said, stepping forward. "It's all right, Mrs. Briers. Don't be frightened. It's just me—John."

She stared at him through wisps of moonlit fog. Her rheumy eyes met his.

"John?" she said, in a quavering voice. " _John Watson?_ Dear boy, have they let you out of the hospital, then?"

His eyes were suddenly as moist as hers. She'd been a fuzzy-minded old thing even twenty-three years ago, but she'd always remembered his real name, even after Moran had started insisting that his stepchildren use his surname and that John become "Hamish" or—if Moran was in a good mood—"Johnny," which he'd seemed to view as his own personal pet name for his stepson, and his alone. John's mother had started calling him "Jamie," then, since that didn't seem to anger Moran as much as "John" did. Only Harry had stuck to his real name—Harry, and some of his friends at school, and the old lady next door. . . .

John reached out and took one of her gnarled old hands in his one good one, squeezing it gently.

"Yes, Mrs. Briers," he said. "They did. But this isn't a good place for you to be; you've got to get out of here. Go home, and—"

He broke off. He'd been going to say, "Go home and call the police." But if she did that, and if she actually managed to convince the local coppers to take her seriously, they would come with lights blazing and sirens wailing and Moran would hear them miles away. He might decide to cut his losses and run for it, but he might just as easily choose to blow up the pillbox first, eliminating one of the witnesses and much of the evidence against him. It would be just like him.

Was it worth the risk? John didn't think so.

"You still don't look well, dear," the old woman was saying, gripping his hand and peering up at him intently. "Your face is all wrinkled, like an old man's. Your leg's not so good yet—I can see by the way you're standing. And what have you done to that arm? And your hand? You're bleeding. Did those awful dogs do that, too? Let me get my moonwort, and then you come along home with me and I'll fix you up in a minute. There's nothing like moonwort boiled up with suet and honey to heal a nasty wound up right as rain."

John wondered what he could say to get her to go.

"I can't just now, Mrs. Briers," he tried, in as soothing a tone as he could muster. "There's something I have to do first. But you should get home right away. Go as fast as you can, and don't let anyone see you. My stepfather's here in the wood, too—you don't want to run into him, you know."

Her wrinkled old eyes went wide.

"Does he have the dogs with him?" she asked, breathlessly.

John nodded.

"Oh, my," she said. "Oh, _my!_ Oh, that's not good at all. Come with me, John. Come home with me. You'll be safe in our house."

She squeezed his hand more tightly and tried to tug him along with her. John swallowed.

"I can't," he said hoarsely, around the lump in his throat. "There's someone else he'll hurt if I do."

Her face crumpled like tissue-paper.

"Your sister again?" she said. "Or your poor mother? I'm afraid it's too late for her now, dear—I think he's killed her. I heard him mucking about in the pillbox just the other day, making such a racket, like he was hammering up concrete and dragging machinery around, and why else would he have been doing that and who else would have the key? I knew it wasn't right—your mum told him not to come back anymore—but there wasn't anyone to tell about it, nobody was home but me. And then I went upstairs and when I came down Pansy was back, and she said you'd come over to use the phone and your mum had gone away, and then the police came and asked if we'd seen her, and I've been trying and _trying_ to tell them ever since, but they won't listen, they just keep saying she's run away from home and left you and Harriet all by yourselves. That's nonsense, John. Your mum would never leave you, or your sister, either. I've been wanting to come and tell you, but nobody will take me to the hospital. I wanted to bring you some of this moonwort for that leg, and tell you not to think she'd left you. I heard him in the pillbox that morning, I've been telling them where to look, but nobody will listen to me. I don't know if they even know what a pillbox is, nobody seems to anymore, but I can't remember the other name for it, and they all think I've gone potty, and that Pansy and my Tom are just as bad as the rest, they won't tell anyone any different, no matter what I say."

A wave of something dark and bitter washed over John. How much better his life would have been if someone, _anyone_ , had listened to this woman, instead of dismissing her as the befuddled old thing everyone had thought her, even then.

He and Harry had spent twenty-three years thinking their mother had left them. Twenty-three years trying not to wonder whether she was alive out there somewhere, leading another life without them—whether they had brothers and sisters they didn't know about, whether the mother they'd adored was happier with her other family than she'd been with them—or whether the letter John had found on the kitchen table on that terrible afternoon had been her suicide note.

And if it had been, when she'd actually done it, and how, and where, and whether it had hurt her very much, and why her body hadn't been found, and whether she would have wanted to do it at all if John hadn't been such a burden for her, if he'd hidden the pain better, if he hadn't taken so long to learn to walk again, if she'd known she wasn't going to have to look after him forever. In his darkest moments, he'd sometimes wondered whether it wouldn't have been better for everyone if he hadn't survived that attack at all.

But he had survived, and he'd gone on surviving. He'd learned to walk again, and to run, and he'd done well at school, and played rugby, and joined the army, and gone to university—and he'd done it all on his own terms, not Moran's, becoming a doctor instead of a sniper, helping people, saving a lot of lives instead of taking them, and taking lives only when he could save better ones by doing it.

And if he'd never quite managed to banish what Churchill once called "the black dog" from his heels, he'd done a pretty good job of keeping it from pulling him down completely and living as if it wasn't really there. He doubted that many of his friends and acquaintances had ever guessed it _was_ there, even the women he'd dated, even Sherlock—though that one was hardly surprising. The man might be an observational and deductive genius, but he was also a seriously stupid git who was entirely too absorbed in himself to notice anything much about anyone around him, beyond what would serve his own particular needs in any given moment.

Sherlock had given John exactly what John had needed two years ago, though—a sense of purpose, and the heightened sense of life he got from having to risk his neck to fulfil it. John had always needed that. It was one of the things about him that drove his sister up the wall—that, and his refusal to talk about the past. The thrill-seeking (as Harry insisted on calling it) had bothered her almost as much as his tight-lipped silences whenever she tried to get him to dwell on their shared pain. She'd hated it when John joined the army. She'd fussed and nagged at him not to do it, even cried once or twice. She couldn't accept that he was joining because he actually wanted to. She'd kept telling him he shouldn't still be playing Moran's games.

That had stung. It was true that John had loved the early versions of those wild games long before he came to hate the later ones, but he thought his passion for adventure was much more deeply ingrained than anything Moran could be held responsible for. He couldn't remember not being that way. It was a part of himself he figured he'd got from his real father, who'd died at the front of his unit under enemy fire in the Falklands.

John had seen the medal they'd awarded his dad for that just once. Harry had found it in their mother's room and taken it out to show him. He could still remember the feel of it in his hands—it had been big and heavy, and beautifully engraved—and the way his mother had cried when she came in and found them with it. She'd put it away and said it always made her feel too sad to look at it, so John had never asked to see it again, even though he'd wanted to badly.

He'd gone through her things looking for it after she left, but hadn't found it. She must have taken it with her. Harry had said once, bitterly, that their mother must have loved their dad a lot more than she'd loved them, since she'd wanted to be with his medal but not his kids. That had bothered John for a long time, until he'd learned that he could put thoughts like that out of his conscious mind by keeping himself fully occupied in a high-risk, high-excitement life that he knew was valuable to others and that he enjoyed—a life that didn't leave him with enough free time for the black dog to creep up on him.

A whole pack of black dogs had caught up with him with a vengeance, though, when that Afghan bullet put an end to his joyful life as a battle surgeon heading out on dangerous missions with an elite commando unit. He should have been able to stay on in the army afterwards as a GP, at least—he'd got that qualification first, before he'd realized just how deadly dull he found regular practice, and had talked the army into letting him work towards his surgical license in the field—but the damned depression had kicked in, he hadn't been able to hide it, and they'd told him he wasn't fit for duty anymore and invalided him right out of the service.

Sherlock had saved him then. John was pretty sure the detective had no idea what John owed him, no thought of having kept his flatmate from anything worse than a long life of limited usefulness and crippling psychosomatic pain. But he had kept him from much worse than that. John had been very close to the end of his rope that day he ran into Mike Stamford in the park.

If Mike hadn't taken him to meet Sherlock, if Sherlock hadn't been such an absurdly interesting git with such a ridiculously fascinating job, if Sherlock's brother hadn't done that extraordinary James Bond thing with the CCTV cameras and the phones and then followed that up with the mysterious Deep Throat act and the attempt at a bribe that John had found so offensive, if Sherlock hadn't dragged John along on that totally unnecessary but completely exhilarating chase over the rooftops after Jefferson Hope, if Hope hadn't had the sheer, bloody-minded gall to show up at 221B and talk Sherlock into taking a ride with him in his taxi, if the two of them hadn't left John with no choice except following them and shooting the man so he wouldn't kill Sherlock—if it hadn't been for that whole bizarre sequence of events, John knew the odds were considerably better than even that he'd have gone back to his dreary little bed-sit that night, taken the service revolver he wasn't supposed to have out of its drawer, and put a bullet through his head.

But Sherlock had saved him. And now Sherlock was locked up in a bunker with enough explosives to atomize several Holmeses stacked on the roof over his head. And Moran was somewhere not very far away in these woods with his detonator and his dogs, and John needed to get this dear old thing home _now,_ if either she or Sherlock was to have any hope at all of waking up alive tomorrow.

"You need to go, Mrs. Briers," he said again, letting go of her hand and pushing it gently away. She took a step back, still peering up into his face.

"You'll be all right, John?" she whispered, anxiously.

"Of course I will," he said, forcing himself to smile.

"Don't let that man hurt you again, John. Don't you let him."

"I won't, Mrs. Briers."

"Promise, dear?"

"I promise," he lied. "Go home now. _Please_."

She turned then and hobbled away. John gripped his stick and limped in the other direction—down the bank, into the little river, and across it, all in a few desperately unsteady strides. He'd have to forget about detours and false trails now. He'd lost far too much time.

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Author's Notes:

Moonwort was once believed to open locks and take the shoes off horses that stepped on it, and to have healing properties when made into a balm with suet. The honey and sage are my own additions, for the sake of the meter in Mrs. Briers' little rhyme—but they couldn't hurt, surely?

I relied heavily in this chapter on my reading of wellingtongoose's tumblr blog about the oddities in John's medical and military careers. I've tried to make some sense of them here, but anything I've suggested should be taken with a heavy dose of salt, as I really know very little about British medical education or military service, and could easily have got it all wrong.

Please don't blame Fang's Fawn for anything that doesn't work in this chapter—I didn't want to wait for her to get home before putting it up, since this is the last chance I'll have have to work on the story for a week or two. I'm grateful to her for reading part of this draft earlier, and for her comments then.

As always, I'd find your feedback very helpful. I try to respond with thanks to every comment. If I haven't for you, it's because you've either logged in as a guest or have turned off your PM feature on this site, so I don't have any way to reach you.


	23. Chapter 23

Author's Note: My apologies for the long delay: it was a very busy summer, with a lot going on this past month as well. I'd hoped to be able to wrap things up in this chapter, but we're not quite there yet. It shouldn't be much longer—just one more real chapter and a handful of epilogues to go, and I've done quite a bit of work on them already. I'd be grateful to hear from you about this chapter, though—it really does help to keep me writing, especially on a project that's taken as long as this one to work through.

I'm in even more debt than usual to Fang's Fawn, who has read and responded in detail to several drafts of this chapter over the past couple of months. I've made changes since she last saw it, so any problems that remain are entirely my own fault, not hers.

In case it's been so long that you've forgotten, we left Sherlock locked in the pillbox and looking over some gardening supplies, and John worrying about how much time he's wasted talking to old Mrs. Briers. The quote is from earlier in that section, not the end, but it's as good a place as any to kick this chapter off from:

 _He remembered the bird going up when he fell, and wondered if Moran had heard it and known what it meant. He had to get out of here, fast._

Chapter 23:

Sherlock had to grind the charcoal very finely, and the grill was a poor excuse for a file. His fingers were aching before he'd finished half a briquette. He had five more halves to go. The thought of that made him want to throw the brick in his hand across the room, just for the satisfaction of hearing it smash against the wall.

Patience had never been his strong suit. The whole situation was pushing all his pressure points: the tedium of the process, the amount of time his plan was taking to put into place, and the urgency of John's need all weighed heavily on him as he worked, building up the pressure in his mind until he thought he might explode any minute himself.

If only that would be any use. Mycroft had always twitted him about his lack of self-control, his tendency to childish outbursts. Well, he wasn't going to indulge in one now. He gritted his teeth and kept working. He didn't have a second to waste.

He found it impossible, though, to keep himself from thinking about what was happening in the wood just beyond that locked door. That shouldn't have been a problem. It should have been the best way to use time otherwise wasted on the tedious, mechanical business of scraping charcoal—if he were only able to approach the situation simply as the logical puzzle it ought to be. _What would John do? What would Moran do in response?_ The better he could work out John's and Moran's likely movements in advance, the more quickly and efficiently he'd be able to go to John's aid once he'd succeeded in freeing himself from the pillbox.

 _This_ _ **is**_ _just a logical puzzle_ , he told himself, trying to set his mind to it again. John would know that water would cover his scent and keep the dogs from tracking him, so he would have wanted to get to the river as quickly as possible. How would he do that? He wasn't stupid, and he'd done this before; he'd know there was no point in trying to hide his tracks before he got to the water, so he'd have taken the straightest route downhill to the river. There was probably some sort of path. People with country houses always wanted easy access to whatever water was nearby; streams, rivers, lakes, oceans seemed to act like magnets, drawing men and women of every description to them.

So, John would have followed the path to the river. But which way would he have gone then? That was the crucial thing. If Sherlock could just focus, he could work it out.

But his logic kept getting twisted around and tangled up in what he could only think of as irrational threads of _feeling._ He couldn't consider what John was doing without realizing what John must be feeling while he was doing it—and he couldn't just think about those feelings, the way he had once deduced, quite rationally, that Jennifer Wilson would have felt pain as she clawed the letters "Rache" into the floor while she was dying. He _felt_ them, too.

That was not exactly accurate, of course. _Really, little brother?_ he could all but hear Mycroft drawling in amusement. _**Your**_ _arm feels as though it were bleeding? Your nerves and muscles are experiencing the agony of having been sliced through by a bullet? Your heart is pounding, your_ _lungs short of breath; **you** __are growing weak and dizzy from exertion and loss of—"_

" _Shut UP!_ " Sherlock shouted silently at the voice in his head. " _Stop it. Stop it NOW!_ "

Of course he wasn't really _feeling_ what John was. But with every step his rational mind pictured John taking, Sherlock was acutely _conscious_ of what John must be feeling, and that was troubling him in ways that—even after the remarkable developments of the past two days—he could not remember ever having felt before.

It wasn't just physical pain he was conscious of, either. There were other forces at work on his friend tonight that Sherlock had only just begun to be aware of. The anguish he'd seen in John's face when he'd looked into the grave had nothing to do with physical sensation, but even Sherlock, who considered himself so detached from ordinary human emotion, had been able to recognize it for what it was. And there had been other emotions as well that had been evident in John's voice during that bizarre exchange with his stepfather, overtones that pointed to feelings which Sherlock _knew,_ in a deep, visceral way he could not have begun to explain to Mycroft or anyone else, it was essential he pin down and understand. Anger, of course, clearly—that didn't require any special skill to work out. Hatred—naturally. But there had been something else. . . .

He thought about the problem relentlessly while he finished grinding the charcoal, constructed the balance scale (from a flat wooden garden stake, carefully measured off into equal segments), weighed out the sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate in the necessary proportions (10, 15, and 75%), and began the appallingly slow process of stirring them all together. But the answer kept eluding him.

 _It must be right there in front of my face_ , he thought angrily, as he kept stirring. No doubt John would have understood immediately, if the mystery had involved anyone else.

Snippets from a conversation with his friend during the Baskerville case just a fortnight ago flickered across his mind: _"You've never been the most luminous of people,"_ and _"Some people who aren't geniuses have an amazing ability to stimulate it in others."_

For God's sake, what was the _matter_ with him, that he'd ever thought like that?

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Harry sat in one of Mrs. Hudson's kitchen chairs, her hands wrapped around a mug of Ovaltine, her knees pulled up to her chin. Her eyes were focused on her drink as she talked. The older woman's never left her guest's face, except when she got up to replenish the Ovaltine.

Harry was on her third mugful. She hadn't drunk more than half of any of them, but whenever her hostess offered to pour off the cooling milk and top it up with hot, she'd accepted. She seemed to find the warmth of the cup in her hands comforting—or perhaps it was simply the pleasure of being fussed over by a motherly presence that soothed her.

Harry had been talking about her parents. Her mother, Martha gathered, had been artistic, a writer and a painter. Harry thought she took after her in some ways but was utterly, totally, and irreconcilably different in others, while John took after their father, who'd been killed in the Falklands when John was seven and Harry eight. She hadn't said much yet about her mother's second husband, except that he'd been a "terrible man."

Mrs. Hudson's first real shock came when Harry named him.

"Moran?" she repeated, her voice shaking a little. "You said his name was Jack Moran?"

"John Sebastian Moran," Harry expanded, enunciating the syllables with distaste. "He was from one of those families that have been around forever—not even close to rich himself, worse luck, but with lots of money and influence just in the background, you know? He loved to talk about all the grand houses he'd spent time in and the famous people he knew. I think his father was a judge, or maybe that was his grandfather—I can't remember. He was named after some Victorian ancestor he was frightfully proud of—an officer in the Indian Army, who was supposed to be terrifically brave. There was a story about him following a wounded man-eating tiger down a drainpipe to finish the kill. Jack loved that; he never let anybody forget it. He liked to call himself Tiger Jack."

Mrs. Hudson took a deep breath.

"I see," she said, though the only thing she was absolutely certain she was seeing clearly was the fact that the attractive but undeniably risky man who had taken her out on the town last night had not shown up on her doorstep by accident—and hadn't come there to check the gas meters, either.

Her recollection of the evening was anything but crisp and she hadn't been able to remember her escort's name when Sherlock had pressed her for it last night, but she remembered it now. She did not think she could be mistaken about a nickname like Tiger Jack, no matter how much she might have enjoyed the drinks he'd plied her with, or the marijuana.

"Jack was very possessive with Mum," Harry was saying, "and with John, too. I think he wanted to make John into a little version of himself. He spent hours and hours teaching him how to shoot, practicing at targets he set up in the garden of this old house he made us move to; hours and hours playing wide games in the woods behind it—stalking, tracking, all that commando stuff."

Harry took a sip from her mug and made a small face. The Ovaltine had gone cold again.

"You grew up in the country?" Mrs. Hudson asked, not quite knowing what to say. She took the mug from Harry's hands, poured some more milk into the saucepan, and put it on the hob again.

"Yes, in Essex. Nobody ever seems to realize there _is_ country in Essex—they think it's just one big, tatty suburb stretching all the way to the sea—but you can feel like you're a million miles from anywhere there, if you don't have a car."

"Didn't you like it there, then?"

Harry shuddered.

" _Like_ it? Where we were was an awful place—horribly run down, and so isolated. There was a big wood behind the house, acres and acres of trees and not much else except an old, burned-out mansion with an overgrown garden full of sinkholes that were just _waiting_ to get you if you put a foot in the wrong place. It gave me the creeps."

"Wasn't there a village?"

"Five miles away. It was a tiny one with just a post office shop. Jack wouldn't let Mum use his car and we didn't have bikes, so you had to walk all that way if you wanted anything. When we first moved in, the only neighbour was a strange old woman in the cottage next door. Her son and his family came to live with her later, and by the time we left school they'd started building a golf course up the road, but for a long time it felt like we were all by ourselves at the end of the world."

"Where did your stepfather work?"

"In Colchester. The regiment was based there—it was our father's as well as Jack's, so that's where we'd been living. The house we moved to was over an hour away. It made no sense at all to live there— _he_ had that long drive to work every day, John and I had to leave our school and all our friends, Mum had to leave all _her_ friends—and since Jack wouldn't let her use the car we never got to see any of them again. But he was from the kind of family where people have country houses, and he was bound and determined we were going to have one, too. Nobody ever came to visit us there—I don't suppose they'd have stayed five minutes if they had, it was such a wreck—but that part of it never seemed to matter to him. I think he just liked boasting to his drinking buddies back in Colchester or London about having a country house. Though I've sometimes wondered . . . ."

Her voice trailed off.

"What do you wonder?" Mrs. Hudson prodded, gently. Harry rested her chin on her knees and closed her eyes for a moment, her hands tightening around her legs.

"Sometimes . . . I've wondered, if . . . if he chose that place on purpose, _because_ it was so far away and off by itself. Maybe he took us there so nobody would know what he was doing. So we couldn't get help."

Mrs. Hudson had just started pouring the milk she'd been heating up. Her hand shook a little when Harry said that, and some of the milk spilled on the worktop.

She wiped it up and passed the mug back to Harry, then put her hand gently on the younger woman's arm.

"And what," she asked, her eyes bright with sympathy, " _was_ he doing, dear? Tell me, if you can. It helps to talk about these things."

She thought she knew what Harry was going to say. The younger woman was fine-boned and quite beautiful, even at thirty-eight and after years of heavy drinking; she must have been stunning as a young girl. Martina Stripovna, the persona Martha had built for herself long ago when she took her clothes off for a living, was wearily sure of what that must have meant.

Harry was not at all stupid, except by Sherlock's measures; she knew exactly what Mrs. Hudson was thinking.

"Not that," she said, quickly. "It wasn't what you're thinking. It wasn't like that at all."

Mrs. Hudson almost sighed with relief. She gave Harry's arm a gentle squeeze.

"That's good," she said. "I'm so glad."

"It wasn't good," Harry said, chokingly. "Good doesn't even come into it."

"My dear girl,"—the older woman's voice was trembling as she asked the question for the second time—"what _did_ he do to you, then?"

Harry's hands twisted tightly around the mug. Martha noticed for the first time how badly bitten her fingernails were; she had chewed most of them right down to the quick.

"To me? Not so much," she said, surprising her hostess again. "Hit me sometimes. Yelled at me, called me names—you know, 'slut,' and 'dyke,' that kind of thing."

The old lady's eyes sparked.

"He had no business to do any of that," she said, sharply.

"I used to try to get him to do it, I think. It hurt and I hated it—but I hated the way he ignored me even more. That's all he did to me most of the time—just ignored me. I wasn't the one who mattered to him. But what really fucked me up was having to watch him hurt Mum and John. That was worse than anything."

Martha Hudson's heart clenched.

"When I got older I started running away, just so I wouldn't have to watch it. I'd stay out with friends, drinking, smoking, shagging—anything so I wouldn't have to go home and watch him hurting them. John doesn't understand that. He thinks I ran away just to save myself."

"John wouldn't think that, Harry."

"He doesn't know what it was like," Harry said, her voice shaking, her hands clenching and unclenching around the mug. "Having to watch what Jack did to him, not being able to stop it, knowing anything I did would just make it worse. Because I always did make it worse. Maybe I should have done something different, but nothing was ever any use, and . . . I'm not like John. I never have been. I never will be."

Mrs. Hudson found her breath again.

"John is a very strong man," she said. "Not many people could be like him."

"He's the strongest person I've ever known," his sister said, the edge of bitterness in her voice making it clear how mixed her feelings were about that. "He was ten when Jack moved in with us. Jack was really good to him at first, and it had been a long time since our father died—three years, that's forever when you're young—so of course John worshipped him. It drove me crazy then—it felt like I was losing him to this man who made it clear every day that he didn't have any use for _me_ —but I understand it better now, I don't blame John for that anymore. I don't think he knows that, though. He never lets me talk about it."

Mrs. Hudson nodded, her heart aching.

"And then?" she said, although she was dreading what Harry might say next.

"And then Jack started hitting Mum. We were both completely shocked the first time we saw him do it. Neither of us had any idea people did things like that. Our dad wasn't like that at all."

Mrs. Hudson's face was tight with sorrow and anger, as well as memories of her own that she rarely thought about and had no intention of dwelling on now, but she nodded again and patted Harry's arm.

"And the next time Jack hit Mum, John got in between them and told Jack to stop."

"That was very brave of him. But you shouldn't—"

"I _know_ it was brave of him!" Harry cried, cutting her off. "But it was _stupid_ , too! He was _eleven_ and short for his age; Jack was over six feet. John called him a coward, and Jack—he just knocked him across the room. And then—I was screaming, and Mum was crying and begging Jack to stop, but he wouldn't, and . . . it was awful. _Awful._ But the next time Jack hit Mum, John did it again. And Jack beat him again. And it just kept happening like that. It became this _thing_ —this crazy, constant war between them. John got so he would do anything to keep Jack from hurting Mum _._ And Jack started to use that to get John to do all sorts of things he might not have done if he hadn't thought Mum would get hurt if he didn't."

"What kinds of things?"

"Anything Jack wanted. Housework, for one. Mum had started drinking; she wasn't really able to keep things going the way Jack wanted them to be. So John started doing a lot of the shopping and the cooking and the cleaning up, because it kept Jack off her."

"John did all that?" Mrs. Hudson was sure she didn't put any special emphasis on her words, but Harry heard an accusation anyway. She closed her eyes again.

"Yeah," she said. "I know. I'm the older one; why didn't _I_ do it for her? I don't know. I've spent twenty years wondering what's wrong with me that I didn't do those things but my little brother did. I feel horrible about it. But John just—he just _does_ things, you know? He makes everything look so easy, you don't even think about whether he should be doing it or not; you just take it for granted that he will. And Jack always ended up beating the crap out of him over something anyway, and I couldn't bear it, so I finally started just getting away. I kept telling myself if I couldn't see it, it wasn't happening anymore; if I wasn't there to make things worse, it would stop. But it didn't stop. I'd come back and see my brother again, and I'd know it hadn't stopped."

Mrs. Hudson nodded, slowly, her heart twisting in her chest.

"I'm sorry, dear," she said, quietly. "That must be hard to remember."

"It is," Harry whispered. "Thank you for understanding that." She swallowed, hard. "That's not the worst of it, though." Her fingers were so tightly laced around the mug that her knuckles had gone white. Mrs. Hudson felt her chest tighten again.

"You can tell me," was all she said.

"I don't even know where to begin."

"Anywhere you can, dear."

Harry closed her eyes again and was quiet for a while. Finally, she said, "There was our room."

"Your room?"

"John and I shared a room. A little one, off Jack's and Mum's bedroom. We shouldn't have had to—there were plenty of other rooms in the house we could have had, but they were full of rubbish from the tenants before us, and Jack's things, and he wouldn't let us change anything. I think he wanted John and me where he could keep an eye on us."

"I expect he did."

"He always locked us in at night. I hated that, so after a while I started climbing out the window. The room was upstairs on the first floor, but there was a drainpipe I could reach and I'd climb down that."

"That must have taken quite a bit of courage, dear."

Harry shrugged again.

"Not really—it scared the hell out of me, but it was better than being locked in. I shouldn't have done it, though; it just made things worse. When Jack found out, he bricked up the window so I couldn't get out—and then the room was dark and hot and airless, and we still had to sleep there, and he still locked us in. He wouldn't even let us have a light. And then he decided I was too old and we shouldn't be sleeping in the same room anymore, but instead of clearing out one of the other rooms for one of us, he built a wall down the middle of that one. A solid brick wall. He said he couldn't use drywall because we'd make a hole in it and crawl though to get to each other. He didn't want us looking after each other, I guess. Or maybe he thought we'd try to have sex or something—God knows; I certainly don't. I think he must have been a little mad, you know? But you'd never have guessed it if you'd just met him. He could be quite charming and loads of good fun—until he lost his temper."

"I don't doubt it," Mrs. Hudson said, drily, and couldn't help thinking how very glad she was that she hadn't accepted Jack Moran's invitation to go home with him last night.

"So there was all this space in the rest of the house," Harry went on, "but we had to sleep in these horrid little, windowless, dark rooms. It was like sleeping in a cupboard. If he was angry, he'd send us up to bed without any dinner and lock us in. Sometimes he wouldn't let us out the next day. Once it was two days. I didn't come home much after that."

"No," Mrs. Hudson said. "I understand that."

"John wouldn't leave because of Mum. And it was harder for him than it was for me. He's quite claustrophobic, you know."

"Is he?" Mrs. Hudson was surprised; that wasn't something she would have expected. But she hadn't expected any of this—though perhaps she should have. There _was_ something different about John. He seemed so low-key and quiet—so nice and decent, but _ordinary_ —when you first met him, but there was that sense of tension she'd often noticed just under the surface, the way he clenched his hands or set his mouth, that suggested strong feelings—anger, even—kept under tight control.

Or mostly under tight control. John was quite capable of lashing out, even at her. She remembered that first day, when she'd told him just to sit and rest his poor leg till Sherlock came back, and he'd nearly bitten her head off. And she'd gathered that he had a pretty short fuse about some things and could be quick with his fists when it went off.

"He'd probably say that's an exaggeration," Harry was saying. "That it's not really claustrophobia and not a big deal. But I know small spaces bother him even more than they bother me. Something happened when he and Jack were out in the woods once. John was never quite the same afterwards. . . ."

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John Sebastian Moran was feeling thoroughly pleased with himself. Chuffed, in fact. He hadn't felt this full of vim and vigour in quite some time.

True, that shot he'd made this morning, which had given him so much satisfaction at the time, had turned out to be a dud; he'd killed Victor Trevor instead of Sherlock Holmes. He still wasn't sure just how that could have happened, but there was no escaping the fact that Sherlock Holmes was currently alive while Victor Trevor had apparently been shot dead.

Ah, well. These things happened. One had to expect to make _some_ mistakes when one lived life continually on the edge, gambling on snap decisions and launching oneself out into breathtaking risks for the sake of equally breathtaking rewards—but ah, what a way to live! Just thinking about it made his heart beat faster and sent little pleasure-peaks of adrenalin spiking deep down inside him.

The risk he was taking now was probably the biggest gamble he'd ever made. He had so much to lose. At a time of life when most men were preparing for the shabby indignities of an underfunded old age, he had a brilliant future ahead of him working for Jim Moriarty in his "firm."

It would have been so easy to assure that future by shooting Hamish (and how he'd always enjoyed rubbing his stepson's nose in that ridiculous name! The belated retaliation against the boys who'd made his own school life hell when they'd discovered his Christian name was "Sebastian" had been quite satisfying) and then blowing the boy's—well, man's now—body up, along with his lover's and his mother's. The explosives Moran had brought with him would have left very little for the police to work with. He could at this very moment have been in the Land Rover driving back to London and his exceptionally enjoyable and remarkably well-paid work, all traces of the disreputable past his new employer would not appreciate thoroughly eliminated. It was really quite illogical to have staked all that lovely future just on a chance to chase his wounded stepson through a damp, foggy little wood at night.

Or so almost any other man might have thought. Moran smiled wolfishly to himself. If simply thinking about the risks he'd taken in his life was enough to get his adrenalin flowing, the thought of what was in store for him tonight came with a pleasure-rush that beat out any other high he'd ever known—and he'd been something of an epicurean when it came to exploring ways of extracting the maximum of enjoyment from any substance he chose to imbibe.

The word that Johnny had thrown at him a little while ago nudged uncomfortably at the edge of Moran's mind. He brushed it aside with disdain. He was nothing so vulgar as a sadist. He was an adventurer of the most elite kind, a man of highly technical and finely honed skills which, to his continual frustration, had never, despite his many years' service as a sniper with a crack unit of Her Majesty's Armed Forces, been properly tested.

Tonight had brought him a completely unexpected opportunity to match his wits, strength, and skills against a man twenty years younger and stronger than he, a man in the prime of life, a man he himself had trained from an early age and taught everything—well, almost everything—he knew. Who could blame him for feeling exhilarated by that? It was the thought of the chase itself that made his blood race and his skin tingle, not the regrettable but unavoidable detail of the way it must end. That ending was necessary, or there would be no real challenge, no meaningful test for either man. Johnny understood that. He probably craved it as much as Moran did himself.

The lack of that ultimate ending had been the only thing missing from those games they had played so enjoyably together all those years ago. Now they had a chance to do things properly. How splendid! Johnny would have had to die tonight anyway, one way or another; once he'd found his mother's body, Moran couldn't have let him go. Since death was inevitable, he would surely much prefer this way to a bullet through his head. He'd even said so. The game had, after all, been his choice.

(Moran felt a flutter of pride at the thought. _That_ was his boy! _That_ was the way he'd been brought up!)

It would be a painful death, to be sure, but that was what gave it meaning. A real man didn't care about pain. He cared about his honour, his skills, the chase. Anything else was just a distraction to be overcome or risen above. And if the thought of another man's pain made Moran's mouth water a little and his cock tighten against his trousers' placket, well, that was just the effect an adrenalin rush had always had on him.

He whistled cheerfully to his dogs. Johnny had made no effort to cover the traces of his descent down the hill, but that was only to be expected. Things would get more interesting when they got to the river. Which way would the boy have gone? Downstream, of course—he'd always gone downstream.

There had just been one time when Johnny had tried something different, and that had not ended well for him at all. Not at all. Neither, of course, had the other time they'd headed in that direction—and the destination of _that_ afternoon's ill-fated excursion up the river hadn't been Johnny's choice at all.

So, downstream then—but after that, east or south?

The dogs were big enough to ford the shallow stream without difficulty. Running them on the south bank, Moran hunted for spoor. The glittering mix of fog and moonlight made the signs harder to trace, but that just added to his satisfaction when he found them: where the little stream joined the river, Johnny had slipped on the muddy bottom and caught himself with a hand against the bank. He'd tried to cover the traces, but hadn't quite succeeded. _Tsk, tsk, Johnny—what did I tell you about haste and waste?_

Moran was positively beaming with delight. Now, which way had Johnny gone next? South and up the little tributary? Or to the east, downstream? He'd chosen both about equally often in the past.

Moran tossed a mental coin and led the dogs downstream. It didn't concern him that they couldn't find the trail at first; naturally, Johnny would have kept to the water as long as possible. The fun would start when he couldn't stay in any longer. If he'd chosen this direction, he was going to get a bit of a surprise, Moran thought with delicious anticipation—the water meadows that used to provide such expansive cover were no longer anything like as extensive as they'd once been.

Moran didn't want this to be over too quickly, though, so he didn't urge his pack to any great speed but ambled happily along, enjoying the memories that the dogs and the wood and Johnny had brought back, savouring the sweet sensations that every step seemed to set tingling in the most intimate way along his skin.

He had a torch, but he didn't need to use it. His sight had always been unusually keen, and in spite of the fog he had no difficulty following a path along the bank behind his dogs. His hearing was acute, too. He was almost halfway to what was left of the water meadows when his ears caught a sound that made him stop in his tracks and turn quickly around: the distant _squawk, squawk, squawk_ of a water bird taking to the air as something disturbed its rest.

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John struggled up the slope from the river, across the footpath, and over the rail fence next to another sign warning him of dangers on the other side. Not far beyond it he came to another, more serious barrier that the fog had concealed: a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.

His heart sank. In the shape he was in, he wasn't sure he could manage the climb. And the thought of subjecting himself to those barbs was almost more than he could stomach. But it was that or the dogs. Unless . . .

Looking more closely, he could see that both the fence and the barbed wire were quite rusty. They must be fifteen or twenty years old at least, overdue for replacing. Maybe the landlords or the local council had been willing to depend more on signage than a well-maintained barrier to keep hikers away from the hazards of the old estate.

And maybe the local teens weren't quite as flaccid and incurious as John had assumed when he'd found the grille over the culvert under the bridge rusted into place.

It didn't seem likely, though, that the energy of modern youth would extend to unnecessary hikes through the woods. If they'd made a way through the fence, it would be somewhere close to the drive that came in from the main road and, crossing the bridge, wound its way across the old estate to the burned-out house.

For the second time that night, John got lucky: halfway back to the bridge he found a place where the rusty links had been cut through and the fencing bent back. He had to bend down to crawl under it. He took a moment to try to force the fencing back into place in the hope that Moran wouldn't see the gap, but it was too stiff for him to manage one-handed so he abandoned the effort. Moran was too good a tracker to be fooled that easily in any case.

On the other side of the fence, the driveway curved away to his right. The asphalt paving was crumbling and weeds were forcing their way through the cracks, but it still looked passable. John weighed his options.

He'd have an easier time walking if he followed the drive to the old house, but that would take him a long way out of his way. The house itself would offer him little shelter—it was a complete ruin, only a couple of chimneys and part of a wall still standing, the old cellars long ago silted up and overgrown—and once he got there he'd have to work his way back a considerable distance through the tangle of trees, briers, and shrubbery that had once been gardens if he was going to find the place he was looking for. He wasn't sure he could find it at all, coming from that direction. Not that he was sure he'd be able to find it if he went the other way, either, or that it would be of any use to him if he did.

He tossed a mental coin and chose the way he knew best, crossing over the drive and climbing up the sloping meadow beyond it.

The trees on this side of the bridge were younger and more scattered than on the north bank of the river or downstream. This had all been meadow and pastureland once; it still had extensive open areas, largely taken over by bracken. The ground underfoot was soft and spongey with layers of dead ferns and the little curls of new ones pushing up through them; where the withered fronds of last year's growth still stood, they brushed against John's legs with a faint, ghostly rattle as he passed by.

There was no hope of hiding his trail here. But he'd never expected to.

John forced himself to move quickly up the slope, his knee screaming in protest and pain jagging up his arm and through his head with every step. He kept to the open stretches and hoped he wouldn't put a foot into a rabbit hole or a mole tunnel. He could just manage to keep going on the damaged knee, but if he broke an ankle he was done for. The thought that he should have stuck to the driveway niggled at the back of his mind. He pushed it away.

It was a hard pull up the hill. A hundred yards. Two hundred. Three.

A breeze was picking up. The fog grew lighter as he climbed. Suddenly a wall rose up in front of him. He'd been expecting it, but it still took him by surprise, stone stacked on stone looming a good ten feet over his head: the old ha-ha, which had let the estate's cattle graze on the meadow and water at the river while keeping them out of the formal gardens above—all without interrupting the view from the great house with a hedge or a fence.

Somewhere along here was a double flight of stairs set into the wall. A fountain had been set between them, the water once pouring from the mouth of a grotesque head in the lowest of a series of waterworks that had ornamented the gardens above. In an impressive feat of 18th- or possibly even 17th-century engineering, they had been fed by water pumped up from the river and returned to it through the culvert that opened under the bridge. It was one of a whole maze of culverts and other, older tunnels that lay under the overgrown old gardens, remnants not only of ornamental waterworks but of the chalk mining that had been practiced by local farmers since Roman times.

The stairs, when John found them, were in much worse shape than he remembered: steps crumbling and overgrown with nettles, even a small tree that had somehow managed to seed itself and sprout halfway up the staircase, its roots pushing up the limestone paving and sending a treacherous scree of broken masonry cascading down the treads below it. The gothic head had been removed, presumably to adorn somebody else's garden. In its place was a gaping hole, barely visible through the waist-high weeds and bracken.

John stopped in his tracks, his mouth suddenly dry.

He'd been fourteen the last time he'd been here.

Harry had been with them that day, back on one of her periodic returns home—which John had always assumed were as much the result of her having run through her funds (lifted from her mother's pocketbook) and friends (anyone she was even remotely acquainted with whose parents would let her sleep over at their house) as by the nervous desire she always expressed to check up on him and their mother. It had pleased Moran to affect a lightly sarcastic interest in their all taking a picnic on a family outing, and their mother's bewildered pleasure at the idea had actually resulted in Harry agreeing—a rare moment of cooperation that had ended in disaster.

John didn't blame his sister for what had followed. Moran had been spoiling for a fight all day. John was quite sure he had chosen their picnic-place on purpose, knowing how John would feel about it, hoping his discomfort would register with his mother and sister and add to theirs.

Jack had enjoyed that sort of game almost as much as he did the more physical ones. If that hadn't been obvious to John before, it would certainly have become clear when Jack decided to turn his stepchildren's bedroom into a pair of narrow, lightless cells, just one day after. . . .

John shuddered, and forced his thoughts away from that day. But he couldn't keep back the memories of what had happened in the same abandoned garden a year later.

It had been a sunny autumn afternoon. There was a terrace at the top of the stairs with a nice view down over the water-meadows to the river. Mum had spread the picnic cloth out and started unpacking the basket. The sun had been warm. Harry had taken off her jumper, revealing the tube top she was wearing underneath. The sight of her bare shoulders and midriff had driven Moran into a rage.

If he closed his eyes, John could still see the jumper lying in a sun-warmed heap on the cheerful red-and-white checked cloth, still hear every ugly name Moran had thrown at the teenaged girl and every angry, defiant word she'd thrown back. The smack of Jack's hand across her face, the purple mark rising on her cheek, the blue-black streaks of her mascara running with the tears down her face as she picked herself up from the ground, the unprintable words she'd called back over her shoulder as she stumbled away. Jack's strangled voice screaming at the dogs to get her; John's own voice shouting as he ran after them. Shouting. Screaming. . . .

John shook himself and opened his eyes. Sympathetic pain was running across every nerve in his body. But most of it wasn't real. It was just another memory of things that didn't matter now. Nothing mattered now, except buying Sherlock time.

 _What are you waiting for?_ he thought. _Get on with it._

He was almost at the top of the stairs when, for the second time since he'd entered the woods that night, he heard a long, shrill whistle.

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	24. Chapter 24

Author's note: This chapter turned out to be _much_ longer than I was expecting-so long that I couldn't wrap everything up in it, as I'd been hoping. So there's still one more to come, plus the epilogues. My apologies!

Feedback is always appreciated and responded to. It really does help.

My thanks, as always, to Fang's Fawn for reading and commenting on this chapter, and all the others.

Chapter 24:

At the sound of Moran's whistle, John turned. The fog had lifted. Down the hill and across the meadow he could just see in the moonlight the long, grey shapes of the dogs slipping out from between the trees along the river.

The whistle had been for his benefit, he thought—to make this thrill of fear raise the hairs on his neck, to paralyse him with the thought of how close the end was and how painful it was going to be.

But fear was a weakness he couldn't afford to give in to. He forced himself to a stumbling run again, across the terraced second level of the old garden to the other ha-ha and the other set of stairs that he knew were somewhere ahead of him.

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Sherlock was beyond frustrated. Weighing the ingredients and stirring them thoroughly was taking a ridiculously long time. It didn't help that they had to be measured out in tiny batches, since he didn't have any containers except the round base of the Weber and a few grubby flower pots with holes in their bottoms.

He fretted as he worked, and tried to keep his mind on planning the next steps.

The powder had to be held firmly against the door. Sherlock considered using the top of the Weber for this but decided it was too large and not sturdy enough to focus the explosion properly. He settled on the funnel from the old cider press, which was smaller and made of cast iron. He couldn't detach it from the press, but that was all right—he needed to build up some bulk behind the funnel anyway, to keep it pressed against the door.

He could use a couple of the wooden orange crates from the back room to build a platform that would hold the press at the right height. He'd have to turn it on its side to bring the funnel flush against the door, but he could stack another crate under it to support the funnel so the thing wouldn't tip over. He could drag the ride-on mower and the paraffin cooker over and shove them in between the press and the blast wall; he thought they would just fill the space. The Weber could be jammed in too, if they didn't. He hoped that would be enough—it was essential to keep as much of the blast as possible focused forward against the door.

The sloping sides of the tipped-over funnel presented another problem: how to keep the black powder in place until the funnel was securely pressed against the door. As he worked away at the powder, he thought out a solution. Then there was the need for a fuse. A length of gardening twine someone had left in one of the flower pots would do. He paused his work on the powder to retrieve the string, roll it up, and put it to soak in the whisky he'd pretended to drink from Moran's flask and poured off into the empty cigarette pack.

If this had happened two weeks ago, under different circumstances, Sherlock might have felt pleased with himself for his cleverness in noticing the string in the flower pot, his quick-wittedness in thinking to secure the alcohol that would help the fuse burn smoothly.

But he wasn't in any mood for self-congratulation tonight. This whole thing was his fault. For not having known more about his flat mate. For never wondering why a man like John didn't have more friends and family to come back from the war to. For never having deduced or investigated or—until Spanish Leather's/Moran's search of their flat had drawn his attention to the photos in John's room—felt even the slightest curiosity about his one real friend's early life. For dismissing Pansy Briers' story as an annoying woman's sentimental clap-trap. For jumping to entirely the wrong conclusions about the reasons for John's obvious discomfort at The Gables. For failing to make what now seemed like the most elementary connections. For dragging John down here in the middle of the night to look for, and into, and _at_ something he should never have had to see. . . .

Caring was not an advantage, Mycroft always said. But people _did_ care. John cared. _Sherlock_ cared. He couldn't hide from that fact any longer: he could shut himself off from much of what other people felt, but not from all of it, not all the time. He knew he would not have wanted to see what he'd made John see—not if it had been his own mother. Or his father. Or Mycroft. Or John. It had been quite bad enough standing over Victor's only-hours-dead body this morning.

And that had been his fault, too. If Victor had stayed in his London house, if he hadn't quarreled with Lance over that picture, if he hadn't been carrying it just when Moran looked at his window, if he'd never painted it in the first place, if Sherlock had done things differently all those years ago. . . . But he'd failed to understand what he'd been observing, failed to make the right connections. Failed to grasp the importance of human emotions. Failed to find a better way to handle them. . . .

His hands were shaking. Some of the potassium nitrate spilled, the white powder sprinkling across the concrete floor. For God's sake, what was the matter with him? He might have been three hits in on a bad night. Fortunately, there was more saltpeter in the bag, but weighing it out again took time. Everything was taking so much _time._

And that was the trouble with all this emotion, as Mycroft would have said. It impaired his mind and his performance, slowing him down. He had to get himself under control. For John's sake, he _had_ to.

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The fog had blown away now, but a wind was chasing the clouds overhead, the moon appearing and disappearing as they came and went. John forced his way through the docks and bracken, some of it waist-high, that covered the old lawns. He was so focused on getting to the second set of stairs that he almost didn't see the danger in time.

If the clouds hadn't parted at just the right moment, he might have fallen in. As it was, a momentary shaft of light warned him that he was just steps away from tumbling into a deep pit. Its sides ran steeply downwards. If he'd fallen in, he might not have been able to get himself out.

His throat constricted. He felt suddenly light-headed. This particular danger-spot was new to him; what it represented wasn't. The tunnels had been crumbling and caving in even twenty-four years ago. . . .

It took a physical effort to force his mind back to the present. He couldn't let himself go like this—he had to be able to function. Moran must be halfway across the meadow by now.

He pushed himself to a run again. As he stumbled up the second set of stairs, as overgrown and decrepit as the first, he was trying to decide which way to go when he got to the top. The choice, when he made it, was instinctive. He hoped it was based in some rational if subconscious calculation of the odds and not just the fear that had left his heart palpitating and his head giddy back by the pit. For whatever reason, he found himself veering off to the left, towards the grotto.

They'd been all the rage once, garden grottos: caverns, usually manmade, designed to provide the visitor with a little shiver of melancholic delight. Hill Hall's grotto had been a small one, two little chambers that the ladies of the house had decorated with seashells, in the fashion of the times. An artificial waterfall had added a musical note, as well as considerable dampness, to the scene. Its plumbing connected it to the culvert system that fed and drained all the waterworks in the garden.

Even in John's day, the absent landlords had thought it wise to secure the grotto's entrance with a padlocked gate. The lock had been easy enough to pick, and generations of teenagers had used the place for smoking dope or making out with their girlfriends. What John would find there now was anyone's guess.

He didn't have time to pick a lock. Even if he could get in, the grotto itself would provide little protection. But if the gate was open, maybe the grate over the drainage culvert would be, too.

It was the slimmest of chances, but it was the only thing he could think of. The only idea he'd had all along had been to find a way into the underground maze, back himself into a corner, and defend himself there as long as he could.

Moran had loved to tell a story about the Victorian ancestor he'd been named for, an officer in the Indian Army who had once chased a wounded man-eating tiger down a drain. John had hoped to be a tiger to be reckoned with—if he could get to a place where one of the narrow tunnels intersected another and conceal himself in a side-passage, he could take on the dogs one by one. He'd thought he'd be able to do some significant damage to them with his staff and his army knife, while keeping himself out of reach—for a while—of Moran's gun.

But his knee was threatening to give way with every step, and his wounded arm was swollen, painful, and still bleeding; the pull up the river and then the hill had taken a lot out of him. He was going to be a pretty fragile paper tiger now.

Still, he didn't have a choice. He kept moving.

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The powder was finished at last. The next step was getting it into the funnel. There was enough twine in the flower pot that Sherlock was able to wrap a length of it several times around a smaller pot and tie it off securely, leaving a long tail hanging down on either side. He tied the fuse to a twig and dropped it through the hole in the bottom of the pot, then stopped up the hole with his handkerchief, set the pot inside the funnel, and ran all the loose strings through the hole in the bottom of that, where the apples had once dropped down into the press.

It was finicky work. He had to hold the pot upright with one hand inside the funnel until he could pull the loose ends of the string tight enough to hold it in place and tie them off. But eventually he had a container secured inside the funnel, and could start to fill it—very, very carefully—with the powder.

Moving the mower and the cooker into place was hard work without John, but Sherlock managed it. Lighting the fuse, at least, wouldn't be difficult: he still had part of a book of matches in his pocket, thanks to his weakness in succumbing to his old smoking habit yesterday. With the funnel tightly jammed against the door, he unrolled the alcohol-soaked string and stepped back behind the blast wall.

His coat was still lying over the remaining orange crates. He retrieved it. Then he knelt beside John's mother's grave and reached for one last time down into it.

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The gate was long gone. Someone had nailed boards over the grotto's entrance. Someone else had pried half of them away.

Behind them the grotto was pitch-dark and smelled of mould and urine. John fumbled his way along the wall to the place where the waterfall had been. Behind him, he knew, Moran and the dogs must be nearly across the meadow to the steps.

His fingers found the grille over the culvert and tugged on it. It didn't move. He pulled again, putting all his vanishing strength frantically into the effort. Nothing budged. He felt his heart-rate double; he was trapped.

He could have sobbed with frustration. He should have gone the other way. He should have headed for the old cave-in—even twenty-four years ago it had been buried behind overgrown shrubs and fallen trees; Moran had complained about having to cut his way through the brambles and what they'd done to his precious Savile Row tailoring; no one who didn't know about the place would have found it and sealed it off since; he _might_ have been able to get into the tunnels there, if he'd just made himself run faster. . . .

 _Don't be an idiot,_ Sherlock's voice drawled in his ear. _Of course you can't pull that thing off—it's screwed on._

John sagged a little, appalled at his own stupidity and how close he'd come to flat-out panic, relieved that he'd realized what he was doing in time. He wouldn't have been so fuzzy-minded if he hadn't been so tired, he thought, but that was a problem he was going to have to keep dealing with. He was beyond tired; he was on the brink of exhaustion.

 _Exhausted and afraid_ , another voice—his own—whispered to him, but he ignored it.

He was already digging in his pocket for his army knife and clamping it in his mouth so he could work the screwdriver blade open with his one functional hand. It was still the slimmest of hopes: the screws would surely be rusted on. They hadn't been exposed to as much water as the ones under the bridge, but the grotto was damp and modern teenagers probably really would rather lie around playing video games than go exploring. They might have wanted the grotto for a drug den or a lovers' nest, but they wouldn't have paid any attention to the culvert. . . .

The screws came away with a few brisk turns, the grille with a single tug. And a whole new plan formed in John's mind as it did.

He got to his feet and carried the grille to the farthest corner of the grotto, being careful not to drop any of the screws along the way. Then he snapped his knife shut and put it back in his pocket, took up his walking stick, and stepped inside the open drain.

Even then, he almost couldn't do it. The smell brought with it such a wave of memories that he flinched back in disgust.

 _Don't be such a fucking coward,_ he told himself. _Get on with it._

But it was only the thought of Sherlock trying to work himself out of Moran's explosive-laden trap that made him force himself in.

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Inside the pillbox, the explosion would have been deafening if Sherlock hadn't taken care to block his ears with his scarf and his hands. Outside, he knew, the sound wouldn't have carried more than two hundred meters at best. As he kicked the door open, he was already making another set of calculations: five hundred meters back to the house; the same, at a guess, down to the river.

He did not discount the value of police aid in a situation like this. Moran was highly trained and heavily armed; it would be a very good thing indeed to have some well-armed support to bring against him.

But Lestrade and his team were asleep at The Cricketers' Arms, five miles away. Moran had taken Sherlock's phone. The men who'd been left in charge of Victor's house were either sleeping now or buried in their earphones in the windowless computer room, absorbed in watching and listening to the fake feed Sherlock had set up for them.

They should have left someone on guard at the front door or patrolling the property, but they obviously hadn't, or Moran's gunshots would have brought help down to the pillbox long ago. Sherlock would have to break into the house to get their attention. And then what? They were only local constables. How long would it take to get them to understand what was happening? To get Lestrade and his team there? Would they be able to reach John before Moran did?

Every second mattered. Sherlock turned his back on the house and ran through the gate, into the woods, and down the path towards the river at top speed.

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The drainage culverts under the old gardens had been designed to accommodate their builders, along with any workers who might be needed to maintain them in the future. A man could walk through them, if he wasn't too tall. John could manage it without stooping. It gave him some savage satisfaction to know that Moran would have to bend over uncomfortably in places to follow.

John had to feel his way along in absolute darkness, hoping he could remember the way. Moran would have the dogs to lead him, and a light—probably a proper torch, as well as a phone (in fact, three phones)—to see by, but little actual knowledge of the maze. He had always been too tall and too dapper about his clothes to be interested in spoiling them in underground exploration. That gave John some advantage, but Moran had the dogs; all he had to do was follow John's trail.

The walls were slick with moisture; the air was cold and dank. John was very tired now, and his clothes were still wet from the river; he found the chill penetrating. There was sweat running down his face, but he started to shiver.

The arches overhead sagged and the walls bulged out alarmingly in places. John knew all too well what that could mean. Under any other circumstances he'd have had to be crazy to come here again—but crazy was a relative thing. There wasn't anything else to work with tonight.

The stench of mould and rot had been overpowering in the grotto; it was actually milder here, and grew less noticeable as John went deeper into the maze. But there was a musty staleness in the air that bothered him more. It reminded him how little ventilation there was down here, how narrow the passages really were, how closely the walls pressed in around him. . . .

He shuddered. He really mustn't let his mind go there. He'd chosen this route because it was his best hope.

But every step was taking him closer to the place where it had happened. He couldn't seem to help himself: with every step he was straining to hear if they were coming behind him; with every step he couldn't keep back the memories of what had happened before. He could almost hear them again: Moran, cursing as he hit his head on a low arch; the click-click-clack of the dogs' nails on the brick floor; the dogs' grunting and slavering as they drew nearer and nearer. . . .

And then there'd been a piteous yelp from one of the dogs—Moran must have stepped on it or kicked it—followed by a whole volley of curses and the sudden, deafening roar of gunfire echoing and re-echoing in the narrow, brick-walled space, together with the raucous barking of the dogs, the terrified whimpers and howls from the one that brushed past John and fled up a side tunnel just ahead, and then the terrible rumbling roar as one of the ancient and poorly maintained arches gave way, bringing God only knew how many tons of earth and rock crashing down around them.

John had been lucky that time, really. He had jumped into the side-tunnel to escape the ricochets, so it all came down behind him.

"Johnny?" Moran had called to him when the noise had subsided. "Are you all right, Johnny?" He'd sounded shaken.

"Yeah," John had called back. "I'm all right. Are you, sir?" At thirteen the "sir" was still habitual, drilled into him by his stepfather from day one.

"Of course. Of course I am. Silly thing to have happen, this, isn't it? Who'd have thought it?"

"Can you get out?"

"Of course I can. This main tunnel's clear enough; there's just this load of rubble that's come down on the side. We'll head back to the house now, shall we, and call the game off for tonight?"

"I can't get out," John had called, his voice rising a little with the beginnings of panic. "I'm in the side passage. It's all blocked up."

"Follow it out the other way."

"I can't get any farther down it—the dog's hurt, and he won't let me by—but I think it's just a dead-end, anyway."

"Well, well, not to worry, Johnny. I'll come back in a bit to give you a hand, but you work on it yourself in the meantime. A man has to be able to cope with whatever combat throws at him, you know. Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, that's the way, remember?"

It was the motto of the armed forces' famous survival school—and the goal Jack always claimed they were pursuing in these midnight chases, which he billed as necessary training for the soldier he expected John to become.

The actual digging-out, when it happened, had taken about twenty minutes. The rest of the five-and-a half agonizing hours had been spent by John in trying to work himself into a position that would let him dig himself and the whimpering, dying animal he couldn't help feeling sorry for out, while wondering how long the air in the musty, lightless little space would last—and by Jack Moran in strolling slowly back to his house for a drink and a meal and a particularly vigorous and—for Jack, at least—satisfying bout of sex with his permanently terrorized wife, before smoking a couple of cigarettes, having another drink, and, finally, strolling back to the old estate with a shovel.

He'd told John all about it on their way home again, alluding to the sex lightly and indirectly, but leaving his stepson in no doubt as to what he'd been doing all that time. He'd waited till daylight to come back so he could see what he was doing, he said. He'd known John was safe enough, and real men had to be able to look after themselves, don't you know? It was a pity John hadn't succeeded in getting himself out. Jack would have to think of a way to help him get used to conditions like that, so he'd do better another time.

The next day Jack had built a wall down the middle of John and Harry's bedroom. It was all part of John's training, he'd explained, cheerfully—and would have the added benefit of giving Harry a place of her own to sleep, while teaching her a lesson or two about the consequences of the disobedience and defiance that were becoming habitual with her.

The memories chased John now as he stumbled down the narrow, musty tunnels, counting his steps and turns and the entrances to passages he passed by, one hand gripping the stick for support, the other sweeping painfully along the walls to help him keep track in the darkness, searching for the place he'd never wanted to see again.

After a while, the tunnels began to widen and deepen. A tall man would be able to walk upright here. The extra space did little to ease John's discomfort. It had been in one of these wider sections that the roof had come down, but the space John had been trapped in had been barely big enough for him to turn around.

When Moran did follow John into the culvert, it was some time before his stepson could distinguish the click-click-clacking and snuffling sounds that really were following him through the tunnels from the ones that pursued him in his mind.

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 _Which way?_ Sherlock thought as he plummeted down the slope. _Which way would John have gone, once he got to the water?_

Sherlock had grown up in the country, but that was a long time ago. His territory was London, where he knew—or claimed to know—almost every street, alley, and rooftop inside out and backwards. He had memorized the geological map of Britain; he knew what types of soil could be found in every county, and where, and what they looked like, but recognizing that he was running on loam laid down by centuries of forestation over a complex mix of chalk and London Clay would do little to help him guess which direction John would have taken.

He could, of course, simply follow Moran's trail, which ought to be easy enough to trace. He was keeping the torch tucked safely in his coat pocket—it seemed best not to do anything to draw attention to himself—but Moran had not been trying to hide his tracks and, even through the fog, the moonlight was enough to let Sherlock catch glimpses of broken twigs, crushed leaves, and the occasional imprints of dogs' paws in muddy patches on the path.

But it wasn't Moran Sherlock wanted to find. He had thought about the situation from every possible angle while he was building his bomb and had wondered whether it wouldn't be best for him to follow Moran and try to find a way to take him out of action without involving John, but he had dropped that idea quite quickly. He told himself he was only being logical—two unarmed men obviously had a better chance of defeating a heavily armed one and a pack of vicious dogs if they worked together—but he was uncomfortably aware that logic had in fact very little to do with his decision. He was deeply worried about John's physical condition and feeling an overwhelming need to assure himself that his friend was still alive and as all right as possible, under the circumstances.

So the question was, which way would John have gone? Upstream, or down?

Downstream would be the easier direction to wade in. A boy would probably have made that choice if he was tired, just because it was easier. John was not a man to shy away from a difficult physical task, no matter what shape he was in, but Moran was likely to think of John more as the boy he'd known than the man he'd become; it was quite possible that he would assume that John, being injured, would choose the easier route so he could get farther away before _. . . ._

Sherlock swallowed. He did not like admitting the probability that at some point John's strength was going to give out and he wouldn't be able to go on. Sherlock forced his mind away from the thought and made himself focus on the main points: John would be trying to keep Moran from picking up his trail. John might not be a Holmes, but by any other standard he was a highly intelligent man. He would have thought this through in much the same way Sherlock just had, and would have chosen the direction Moran was least likely to expect—upstream.

Something was niggling at the back of Sherlock's mind: a voice, something he had heard someone saying not very long ago. What was it? He couldn't remember; he must have deleted it. Of course, nothing was ever _truly_ deleted, any more than it generally was on a computer; there was always the trash bin full of intact items of unnecessary information just waiting to be retrieved, and the shadow data lying deep in the hard drive under that. He could get almost any thought back if he just took the time to clear his mind. . . .

He brushed that idea away impatiently. The last thing he could afford right now was time to shut down and meditate. It didn't matter anyway: if he'd deleted something, it couldn't be important. The soil was softening under his feet, and he could hear the river now. In another minute he'd be able to see which way Moran, at least, thought John had gone.

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John had thought he'd been going as fast as he could. Once he realized what he was hearing, he tried to make himself move faster. The sounds of his pursuers grew louder, echoing weirdly through the old tunnels.

The acoustics had always been strange down here—sometimes you could hear someone else in the maze as clearly as if they were standing next to you, when they were actually half a mile or more away, and other times they could sneak up on you and take you by surprise without your hearing a thing. John hadn't explored with other boys often enough to be able to remember what to expect that way, or where, but he couldn't help feeling that the dogs and Moran must be gaining on him.

Then Moran started to whistle—not the three-note phrase he used to call the dogs, but an actual tune. He must have reached one of the sections where he could walk upright. Even with the distorting echoes, John recognized the song: "My Favourite Things."

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The fog was thick and dense along the water. The moonlight refracted in its droplets dazzled Sherlock's eyes and made it difficult to see very far, but a careful examination of the vegetation on either side of the path convinced him that Moran and the dogs had crossed the river, so he waded across to see which way they'd taken. The water wasn't very deep, but it was cold, and the bottom was rough with rocks and slippery; he was glad to pull himself out on the other side.

John couldn't have done that. He'd have made himself stay in the river as long as possible. He was six inches shorter than Sherlock; the water would be almost up to his knees. Harder to move through. More skin surface immersed, more heat loss. And he'd been shot.

There was another path on the other side, running along the south bank. Sherlock studied the muddy ground for clues and found them—everywhere. Moran had run the dogs in both directions.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Unless the bastard had started off the right way and turned around too soon, he was on John's trail.

Well, maybe Moran _had_ turned around too soon. But why would he do that? Something must have made him reconsider his choice of direction. Something he'd seen? Not likely—John had had that fifteen-minute lead, and there was the fog. Something he'd heard, then, or something the dogs had heard. And if what they'd heard had been John, they would be headed in the right direction now.

How long ago had it happened? There was no way to tell.

Maybe it was nothing, Sherlock thought, swallowing hard. An otter splashing into the river, an owl catching a rabbit. . . .

Or a man, weak from loss of blood and his feet numb with cold, slipping on a loose rock and splashing down.

Sherlock ran along the bank, heading upstream. The dogs' tracks were so crisscrossed and overlaid that he couldn't tell which which way Moran had taken first and which last, but everything he knew about John was telling him that the harder route would have been John's choice.

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The end came in a breath of fresh air.

John felt a soft caress along his cheek—just a whisper of a touch at first, but it told him how close he was to his goal, almost there. A few more yards and the whisper had become a cool, steady draught, stirring John's hair and filling him with relief.

The staff he'd been half leaning on and half using to feel his way along met resistance well above the ground. He tucked the stick into the crook of his left arm so he wouldn't lose it, and used his good hand to gauge the extent of the blockage. It rose in a steep slope, as he'd expected, walling off the passage to the right and part of the way ahead.

He could hear Moran and the dogs getting closer.

He pulled himself onto the pile of dirt and rocks that had once sealed him into the side-tunnel and started to scramble up it towards the hole in the roof where the cave-in had happened, and open air. He was so tired, in so much pain, and so focused on putting his plan into action that it never occurred to him to wonder why he couldn't see any moonlight overhead.

When Moran had finally got around to digging out the thirteen-year-old John, he'd been able to do it quite easily because he hadn't had to do much heavy lifting: approaching the cave-in from outside and above, he'd been able to knock most of the stones and earth that had to be moved back into the main tunnel, adding to the mound already there but creating the gap just under the arch to the side tunnel that had finally let the boy wriggle through. John could still remember the relief he'd felt when the air hit his face, the effort it had taken not to cry when Jack had reached a hand down to grab his and help him out.

The cave-in had been a relatively small one. The hole it had left in the roof of the tunnel hadn't been large; John had found it a fairly close fit, even at thirteen. He'd put on height and weight since then, of course, but he'd expected to be able to get himself out this time, too.

But as he reached the top of the mound, he realized that what twenty-four years ago had been freshly piled-up rocks and dirt had long ago become the seeding-ground for a bushy tree that had grown up through the gap in the roof. The foliage was so dense that not even a hint of moonlight had been able to get through.

Moran had switched from "My Favourite Things" to "The British Grenadiers." John couldn't tell how close he was, but the livelier tune suggested his enemy was picking up his pace.

He pulled frantically at the branches, trying to rip off whatever he could to make room to squeeze himself through, but even after he'd cleared everything down to the outermost trunk, he couldn't quite do it. The trunk itself was too deeply rooted for him to pull up, too thick to cut down with his knife. He sagged against it, on the edge of letting go, breaking down.

 _Damn it,_ he thought, his mind so exhausted it couldn't come up with anything more forceful to say. _I was so close._ _So bloody, goddamned_ _ **close**_ _. . . ._

 _Don't be an idiot, John,_ Sherlock's voice said in his head for the second time that night. _Take your clothes off._

 _Jesus,_ John thought. _I really_ _ **am**_ _a bloody idiot! What the hell does he put up with me for?_

Unwrapping the improvised bandage and working his jacket over his wounded arm was excruciating. The jumper was going to be worse. To save time and agony, he unbuttoned his shirt under the jumper and pulled that and the t-shirt off with it. _Like taking a plaster off,_ he thought; _just one quick tug and it'll be over._ It wasn't anything like taking a plaster off, but he got through it. He didn't fancy getting stuck because a pocket or belt loop caught on something, so his belt and trousers followed.

He bundled the clothes together, meaning to push them out ahead of him, when another idea struck him. Using the bloody strip of cloth he'd unwrapped from his arm to tie the ball of clothes together, he took a step or two back down the pile of rubble and, putting as much force into it as he could, bowled the whole thing down the far side of the mound and into the tunnel ahead.

The blood on the bandage all but ensured that the dogs would pick up the scent and follow it. Moran would think John hadn't been able to get through the gap and had continued on up the tunnel. That might give John enough of a lead to make a difference.

" _With the tow, row-row-row, row-row-row, row-row-row—"_

Moran had switched to singing. His voice was loud and clear; John couldn't hear any echoes at all. His enemy must be just around the corner.

John pushed his staff out of the hole ahead of him before easing himself into the narrow space, his most valuable tool—his army knife—gripped in his teeth to leave his hands free.

Getting through added a whole new set of cuts and scrapes to the damage on his body, but this time he made it.

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Two hours, Sherlock kept thinking. It had taken him two bloody hours to build his bomb. Two hours for John to be pushing himself up the river; two hours for Moran to catch up with him. The farther Sherlock went upstream, the clearer it became that Moran, at least, thought this was the right path: the tracks that had been so crisscrossed and confusing back at the place where they'd forded the river now pointed in only one direction. Moran hadn't done any backtracking here.

How far ahead was he? Far enough that Sherlock could hear and see nothing of him or the dogs. And how far ahead of Moran was John? Sherlock had no idea. It all depended on how far John had been able to get before Moran turned around, how fast Moran and the dogs were moving— and how fast John had been able to move after what Sherlock was increasingly certain must have been a bad fall.

The more he'd thought about it, the clearer it seemed that, if John had simply slipped and fallen while wading up the river, Moran shouldn't have been able to hear the splash—John had had that fifteen-minute lead, and Moran had started in the wrong direction.

But the land rose steadily as Sherlock moved upstream, and there were waterfalls that a man who didn't want to leave traces of himself on land would have had to negotiate. None of them were very big, just a few feet high at most, but John would not have full use—probably not _any_ use—of the arm he'd been shot in. If he had tried to climb the slippery rocks one-handed . . . .

There was no sign so far that he'd left the water. Sherlock tried to tell himself that was good; if John had fallen while climbing a waterfall, he would have hurt himself badly enough on the rocks that he would have had to get to land. He might, of course, have pulled himself out on the other bank—Sherlock couldn't see clearly enough through the darkness and fog to tell.

He took some comfort in that possibility, too: John being hurt badly enough to force him out of the relative safety of the water was not a thought his friend wanted to dwell on, but it was better than having to consider the possibility that John had been knocked out by a fall and drowned. The river wasn't wide and the water was shallow, but anything could happen to an unconscious man, and in the dark and fog Sherlock could have passed right by a body without seeing it.

He had covered about two miles before he noticed the signs. Actual signs, printed ones, posted at intervals along a rail fence beside the path: "Danger," they warned. "Stay on Trails."

This puzzled him. The place was obviously public parkland; the trail he'd been following was reasonably well-maintained; apart from Moran and his dogs and the river, what danger could there possibly be?

He had run another half-mile before he realized the answer. It came as the conversation he'd been trying to remember earlier, the one he'd thought he'd deleted.

" _St. Mary's Wold," the policewoman at the wheel said suddenly, giving Sherlock the unaccustomed and distinctly uncomfortable feeling that she'd read his mind. "That village back there's got the same name."_

" _Nature reserve." It was a statement, not a question, but she replied as if he had asked._

" _Mostly. There are some private woods that back up on it, too, part of an old estate. The house is a ruin—burned down almost a hundred years ago—and some conservancy group or other is always trying to raise money to buy the place, but they haven't made the asking price yet."_

 _Sherlock said nothing, wishing she would read his mind again and see the disinterest screaming there. But the constable seemed to feel she had to make up for the time lost to silence earlier; she kept talking._

" _Used to be one of those grand gardens, with fountains and a grotto and one of those funny hidden walls for keeping sheep out—a ha-ha, that's what they call it. Took fifty men to look after, my granddad said his grandfather told him. You'd never know it now, would you?"_

" _In there?" Sherlock was startled into asking. It seemed unlikely: there was nothing but trees on that side of the road, though on the other an expanse of gently rolling green was clearly a golf course. He had been distracted by noticing the distant sound of a helicopter and wondered if he could have mistaken what she said._

" _Yes, just in there, in all those trees. The drive is off another road. The place is all grown over now, of course, and the walls are tumbling down, but bits of the garden structures are still there, if you know where to look. You have to be careful if you walk off the paths; the ha-ha can take you by surprise, and there's quite a drop from the top in places still. It was the highest one in the country once, they say. Twelve, fifteen feet in places. Petworth's only nine."_

Sherlock's feet kept moving, but something in his mind seemed to pause while he processed this new information.

The old gardens the nattering policewoman had described sounded like just the sort of place John would head for: one that would offer abundant opportunities to hide from Moran or lay traps for him and the dogs. But they also sounded like just the sort of place a boy would have sought out when playing midnight games of hide-and-seek with his brutal but not yet murderous stepfather. Sherlock had concluded that John would have headed upstream because its difficulty made it the less likely route. If a younger John had chosen that direction as often as now seemed probable, wouldn't he have gone _downstream_ tonight instead?

Could Moran have made a mistake? Could he have had the right idea at first but been distracted by a noise made, not by John, but by something else—some nighttime bird or animal, even some other person who might have been in the woods?

If that had happened, then John was miles away in the opposite direction and as safe as a man who'd been shot in the arm a few hours ago could be. Maybe he wasn't even that badly wounded; maybe Moran's shot really had just grazed him; maybe Sherlock had been running the wrong way and expending all this frightened and frightening—no, _terrified_ and _terrifying—_ sentiment worrying about his friend quite needlessly. Maybe John was all right after all.

Sherlock stopped abruptly as he considered this possibility, his sides heaving, his knees trembling with the shock of relief. For a moment, everything went a little fuzzy. He bent over and breathed in deeply, a long, shuddering sigh. After a minute, his vision began to clear. He started to straighten up—and froze.

Instead of the neat, forward-facing prints he'd been following wherever they appeared, the trail in front of him was covered in a whirlwind of tracks, as if Moran's dogs had suddenly decided to chase each other in circles and then go after their own tails. Turning this way and that, they had run back and forth along the path and down the riverbank to a grassy spot above some reeds by a fallen tree.

Feeling more than a little sick, Sherlock followed them. The rushing sound of water splashing over rocks told him that while he'd been so absorbed in his happy deductions, he'd jogged right past one of the falls.

He pulled his torch out of his pocket and shone its beam on the riverbank. Even with the big paw marks everywhere, he could see the signs quite clearly. A knee print, just above the waterline. Grass pressed into the damp earth. Footprints from a size 8 crepe-soled shoe. Some khaki-coloured threads. And a few smears of dried blood on the grass and tree.

The dogs hadn't caught John here; there wasn't enough blood for that. They'd found the place where he'd pulled himself out of the river, leaving the print of one knee in the mud. Then he'd sat on the bank and cut off part of his trousers, which meant he must have injured his leg. The blood would be from that, or else from the wound to his arm, which could easily have been made worse by a fall. He hadn't tumbled down the waterfall, at least—or if he had, he'd been able to get back up it again—but whatever had happened, he wasn't in good shape. He'd obviously got blood on his hands while treating himself; it had transferred to the grass and the tree while he was getting to his feet.

Sherlock tried to focus on the fact that John _had_ got to his feet and walked away. Although "hobbled" would be a more accurate verb: Sherlock could see from the depth of the prints in the mud that John was putting most of his weight on his left leg. A round mark appearing regularly about twenty centimeters in front of the opposite foot made it clear that he'd had to find something to use for a cane.

Sherlock switched the torch off. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he'd be able to follow John's trail without it. His mouth was set in a very tight line as he climbed back to the footpath and started to run.

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John emerged into a thicket of trees and bushes, so densely overgrown that no moonlight seeped through the canopy, even this early in the spring. He could have used some light. He needed to find something to block the exit with. At six-foot-four, Moran wouldn't be able to climb out of the gap, but the dogs could; he had to find a way to close it off. Then he could head back to the grotto and screw that grille back in place, sealing them in.

That was the possibility that John had realized when he'd been able to unscrew the grille: once it was screwed on again, there was no way Moran would be able to take it off from inside. And that opening was the only way in or out of the tunnel system that Moran could use. The older man was too tall and too wide in the shoulders to be able to fit through the hole in the caved-in roof, even the more generous version of it that John had climbed out of twenty-four years ago. The grille across the culvert down by the river, where John had first meant to get into the tunnel system, was rusted shut, and the almost-vertical drains that connected one terraced level to another were as narrow as the space John had just squeezed himself through. Moran would never be able to do it.

And he wouldn't be able to set off the explosives on the pillbox, either, because he wouldn't have any reception for his phone underground. If John could just get back to the grotto before Moran did, everything would be all right. Incredibly, against all the odds, he would have won.

The thicket John had come out into was littered with small boulders. They had once studded the great sweep of daffodils which had been the glory of this part of the garden, and had been placed there meticulously by Gertrude Jekyll herself. With no thought for the sacrilege he was committing, John used his staff as a lever to uproot the two nearest stones and then rolled them across the hole. He didn't worry about securing them: there was no way Moran could get far enough into the narrow space to be able to roll them away again.

Feeling better than he had all evening, John turned to head back to the grotto. He hadn't gone ten paces before a terrible realization stopped him in his tracks.

Just those few steps had brought him to the edge of a loose scree of rock. It ran down a gentle slope into the pit of another cave-in. The opening was much larger than the hole John had just squeezed himself through. Even a man twice his size would have no difficulty getting into or out of the culvert system here—if he didn't mind the frenzied growling and snarling of the dogs just a short way down the tunnel leading to it.

John had had no idea this opening was here. He couldn't even curse his bad luck that the dogs had found this way out; it was his own damned fault. They wouldn't be making all that noise unless they'd found something really tasty to fight over—like a ball of clothes and bandages soaked in blood.

So. This was it, then. His plan had failed. He couldn't see Moran or the dogs yet, but it was obvious from the sounds that the tunnel between them wasn't blocked. It wouldn't be long before Moran realized that, too.

He felt strangely numb. There was a point where you couldn't keep denying it, he thought, where you couldn't keep shouting down what your body was trying to tell you: that you didn't want to die, but you couldn't do anything to stop it; that you didn't want to hurt anymore, but you couldn't do anything to stop that, either; that you'd thought you knew a lot about pain but what was about to happen would be inconceivably worse than anything you'd ever felt before; that you were weak and helpless and horribly afraid.

 _It's just transport,_ the voice in his head remarked. It sounded so much like Sherlock that John would have laughed, if he hadn't been so close to weeping instead.

 _Yeah, right,_ he tossed back. _Maybe if you're a bloody genius with a mind palace and the ability to live on air and water and no sex. . . ._

 _Use your mind, John,_ the voice replied. _You've got a good one. You don't think I could put up with you if you didn't, do you?_

Something broke then.

 _My mind's done in,_ he thought, not even trying to wipe his eyes. _I need yours._

Nobody answered.

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He couldn't pick his feet up properly. He didn't have the energy. He was so tired, and so cold, and even though he was going through the motions of trying to get away, it all seemed pointless. Any minute now, Moran would realize what had happened. He would find the open pit at the end of the tunnel and get out. He'd have no trouble picking up John's trail. It would all be over in a couple of minutes then.

So tired. So cold. He should have let the dogs get him in the woods or the tunnel—at least then he wouldn't have had to go to his death half-naked and shivering, in nothing but his boxers and his shoes.

He was crossing an open stretch of weeds and bracken that had once been a lawn, and looking around for a tree. If he could get into one and climb up high enough, he'd be out of reach of the dogs. Moran would shoot him, but if he could wedge himself into the branches, he wouldn't fall and they couldn't get him. At least he'd have spared himself that.

Moran would probably come up after him, of course. Then John could have a go at kicking his face in. Unless Moran decided to shoot his kneecaps out. Yeah, that was exactly what he'd do . . . .

God, what a fool he was, thinking he could do anything to save himself or Sherlock now. What an idiot he'd been all along, thinking Sherlock would come up with a way to get out of the pillbox, hoping that between them they could beat Moran at Moran's own game.

 _Use your mind, John. You've got a good one._

Yeah, right.

 _Use your mind, John. You've got a good one._

It was nonsense, of course—John couldn't actually imagine Sherlock saying or even thinking that in a million years. He knew the words were just a reflex of his own mind trying desperately to psyche itself up and kick itself into action. But there wasn't anything left to think of, anything left to do.

 _Use your mind, John. You've got a good one._

 _You don't think I'd put up with you if you didn't, do you?_

And then he thought of something he could do.

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	25. Chapter 25

Author's Notes:

I'm afraid this is a ridiculously long chapter, but I couldn't stand the thought of leaving you with any more cliffhangers, so I'm posting it all as one. The story isn't quite finished yet, though. Check back next Friday; I'm hoping to have the last chapter up then.

My thanks, as always, to Fang's Fawn, who wasn't able to look over all of this, but gave me invaluable comments on parts of it.

Feedback would be, as always, greatly appreciated.

Chapter 25:

The night pressed against the window, but the light over Martha Hudson's kitchen table burned steadily while Harry talked. Her story came out in bits and pieces. When she tried to talk about the dogs, she began to shake so badly that Mrs. Hudson took the mug of cooling Ovaltine from her and set it on the worktop; then she pressed the younger woman's trembling hands in hers and held them tightly until she was able to go on.

For a long while, Martha thought the horrors would never stop. Detail after detail oozed out, each one stabbing at her chest in a way the old lady had not thought she could still be hurt. She kept her feelings to herself and focused her attention on her guest, offering her tissues from time to time, but never taking more than one hand off Harry's to reach for them. The tightness of the younger woman's grip made it clear how much that steady source of comfort was needed.

Finally, though, Harry had talked herself out. Her head dropped back against her chair; her eyes closed.

"You poor child," Mrs. Hudson said, softly, patting one of the hands she was still holding. "You poor, dear child. Let's get you back to bed."

She shook Harry's shoulder gently until the younger woman woke and groggily allowed herself to be led back to the sofa in the sitting room, where Mrs. Hudson tucked her in for another sleep.

The old lady's eyes were wet as she pulled the blanket into place and straightened up. "That poor child," she whispered again, before she felt her way back to her own bed.

It wasn't really pity she was feeling so much as a deep, heartsick grief—and it wasn't really Harry she was weeping for at all.

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John was making his way down the top flight of stairs when he heard Moran's whistle. It was followed for the first time by the terrifying noise of the dogs baying.

They were out of the tunnels, then, and on John's trail. Well, that was good, really—he wouldn't have to try to keep himself conscious and alert through a long wait.

He didn't have any trouble finding the place—the cave-in he'd almost fallen into when he was crossing the terraced lawn between the two sets of stairs. He wondered if Moran had noticed it on his way up the hill. He and the dogs must have passed as close to it as John had. Would he remember? Would he realize what John was doing?

John thought not. The dogs had tasted blood now. Moran would be as keyed up as they were, immersed in his anticipation of the kill. John remembered only too well the altered state the man could shift into when his taste for cruelty was aroused, a kind of hyper-focus that shut out any input beyond the source of his perverse enjoyment. . . .

John had done some track and field in school, as well as rugby. When he was close enough he forced himself—knee screaming, arm in agony—to what he guessed would be his last run.

As he planted his staff firmly into the ground and launched himself into a long jump over the pit, a vivid memory flashed unexpectedly across his mind: Sherlock's hand reaching out over a three-storey drop, while John hesitated for a moment before hurling himself off the edge of a roof after the crazy idiot he'd only met that morning.

The crazy idiot who'd made up a whole new crazy career for himself, when none of the usual ones would fit. The mad, brilliant git who never seemed to doubt for a moment that he was reaching back, not to the washed-up, fucked-up cripple that ten minutes earlier had been all John could see in himself, but to a strong, brave man who loved adventure and didn't know how to live without it.

Sherlock's hand was still in front of John's eyes when he landed—hard, but on his feet. The pain was dizzying. He could have laughed out loud in spite of it.

 _Screw you, Moran,_ he thought, as he looked back with light-headed satisfaction at the trap he'd just set. _You haven't beaten us yet._

And for the first time since he'd heard that burst of gunfire from the pillbox, John felt certain that Sherlock _was_ alive and well, and that somehow he, at least, would survive this.

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On the night after Victor Trevor's murder, Mycroft had instructed two of his minions to focus all their attention on reviewing the security videos from The Gables. These had already been gone over quickly that afternoon, but Mycroft wanted them scrutinized with greater care, to make sure no detail that might point to the identity of Trevor's killer would escape notice.

He was particularly concerned about the videos from the garden, as he was well aware that the proximity of the public wood behind the house had always been the weak point in the security arrangements he had overseen when the new Secretary of State for Culture, Media, Sport, and the Olympics had begun getting the threats that Mycroft had for some time been trying to convince Downing Street would be inevitable with London hosting the games.

That public wood was not entirely unprotected. The perimeter of the conservation area and the old estate abutting it was fenced, and the fencing, though old, was high and topped with barbed wire, which was enough to keep most people out after hours. Its main access points were the public entrance to the conservation area, which was supervised during the daytime by a parks employee in a little kiosk, and kept gated and locked at night; a gate off the main road, which was always locked; and three other gates that—in keeping with laws going back to medieval times—gave landowners along the property line access to the wooded common land along the river that made up the bulk of the conservation area.

When old Mrs. Briers had gone hunting for herbs just before dawn, she'd taken her key with her. The same key opened the gate at the bottom of the farmer's field on the other side of The Gables—though there was also a low stone wall inside that, with a stile that she'd had to scramble over to get to her mugwort. That particular stretch of fence was the oldest part of the perimeter, predating by a good sixty years the rest of the fencing around the conservation area. The iron gates in it had been installed when it was put up, and, the neighbours in those days trusting each other, the same keys would open any of them—but since Mycroft's security team had installed modern fencing and a modern gate just inside the old iron gate at The Gables, the old ladies in the cottage next door could only access their own property or the farmer's field with their key. The farmer, who lived several miles down the road, had lost his long ago and never bothered to replace it.

Still, Mycroft had not been happy about the wood. He hadn't had the budget necessary to install security cameras everywhere he wanted to along the perimeter fence, and had had to content himself with warning the new minister that a determined assassin undoubtedly _could_ gain access to the wood, where it would be easy to lie in wait with a sniper's rifle, ready to pick off the minister when he was walking in his garden or even his house. Mycroft had strongly recommended that the house's windows be replaced or covered with bullet-proof glass. But the minister had objected on both aesthetic and financial grounds—and Mycroft's superiors had gladly grasped at the excuse not to have to come up with still more money for Trevor's protection.

That made little difference to Mycroft, who was ultimately responsible for the security arrangements and so for whatever lapse in security had led to Victor Trevor's murder. Caring for other people might be no advantage, but the Ice Man cared a great deal about his own performance on the job—and not just because of its effect on his reputation. He was Mycroft Holmes. He had impossibly high standards, and he expected himself to meet them. To fail was unthinkable, but there was no question that he had just failed—quite spectacularly—to ensure the safety of the minister in charge of the Olympics. No terrorist group had claimed responsibility yet, but the likelihood that other acts of foreign or domestic terrorism would follow in the days or weeks to come was, frankly, terrifying.

And then there was the Sherlock complication. Mycroft was all too aware that he had only himself to blame for his little brother now being involved in investigating the murder of the man who, before John Watson, had been the only real friend he'd ever had. Mycroft had found it convenient to send Sherlock to Astor Mews when the problem had been only a supposed break-in that Mycroft himself had already deduced was, in all probability, nothing more than a clumsy attempt at insurance fraud. Urging Lestrade to call Sherlock in had had the combined advantages of 1) delegating to his little brother the time-consuming business of explaining to the Met what had happened, thus leaving Mycroft himself free to pursue one of the many other pressing projects that were always competing for his attention, and 2) getting Sherlock, whose continual stream of texts was becoming tedious, off his brother's back.

Mycroft had allowed himself to take a degree of malicious pleasure in the fact that Sherlock would undoubtedly be discomfited to find himself in Victor's house, surrounded by Victor's paintings. Sherlock's all-but-omniscient older brother had heard about the portrait and the trouble it had stirred up at the new minister's party; he'd found the idea of Sherlock's coming face to face with it and having to explain its existence to Lestrade quite amusing.

So it had been pleasing, in the moment, to push the buttons that had resulted in Lestrade's asking for Sherlock's help at Astor Mews. Busy as he was with other things, Mycroft had momentarily forgotten his mother and her longstanding conviction that Sherlock's last, most-nearly-disastrous descent into drug use had been a direct result of the loss of his friendship with Victor.

Mycroft had been annoyed by the idea at the time. It was always annoying that Sherlock was (by Mycroft's standards) so much more openly vulnerable than his brother had ever allowed himself to be, and rather more than annoying that their parents never seemed to have appreciated the _effort_ it took their oldest son to maintain his own protective façade and be the steady, reliable man they—and, though very few people knew it, just about everyone who mattered in Britain, including the prime minister and the Queen herself—leaned on and took for granted.

Mycroft had no desire that anyone, least of all his parents or his little brother, should penetrate his deepest self and expose his secret vulnerabilities and pains, but it had not been easy to be a young Mycroft Holmes, and there was a part of the older man that could not help feeling aggrieved at times that everyone around him seemed to assume it had been, and that it was only his little brother who ever needed special attention and consideration. Not that Mycroft _needed_ those things now—he prided himself on _needing_ nothing and nobody, although he unquestionably enjoyed his physical comforts and privileges very much—but he would rather have liked a certain amount of concern to be _offered_ occasionally.

Nevertheless, Mycroft was now wishing that he had given rather more thought to the possible effects of stirring up that particular set of memories in his always-too-sensitive younger brother's mind. He would never have put Sherlock on the Astor Mews case if he had known it would result in Sherlock's investigating Victor Trevor's murder. He could only hope that the presence of John Watson would be enough to mitigate any unpleasant effects the former friend's death might have on his little brother.

Mycroft had tried to teach a younger Sherlock how to protect himself from his emotions, but he knew his lessons had been imperfectly learned. In his bleaker moments, when his own isolation was weighing on him more heavily than usual, Mycroft had sometimes wondered if that wasn't actually a good thing. He was genuinely grateful for John's presence in Sherlock's life—it took some of the responsibility for looking after his little brother off his own shoulders, and he knew Sherlock was happier with a companion like John to share his adventures with than he'd ever been on his own. The problem was, what would happen to Sherlock when John got tired of sharing a flat and a job with an antisocial, egocentric genius—or when something happened to John?

All lives end; all hearts are broken. Mycroft had his own reasons for putting that thought at the core of his daily life. He envied Sherlock at times, but not enough to risk for himself the devastation he knew would inevitably follow, if he became in any way dependent on the friendship or even existence of another human being.

Except Sherlock's existence, of course; Mycroft couldn't help caring about that. And so he was more than usually fretful as he pursued his own work while his minions combed through the security tapes from The Gables. The assassin _must_ be far away by now; the threat _must_ be over, at least in that particular corner of England. Sherlock _must_ be perfectly safe—and John Watson, too.

But Mycroft found it hard to feel any deep confidence in that idea. He felt jumpy and irritable—even more irritable than he would have been anyway, and, given how little sleep he'd had recently, that was saying a good deal.

And so, when another knock on his door disturbed him and the head that appeared around it proved to be that of young Bates again, he snapped, "I hope the only reason you're interrupting me like this is to tell me you've found out who the assassin is?" And when Bates, fresh out of Cambridge with a double first and eager to make a good impression, stammered, "N-no sir. Not exactly that, sir," Mycroft didn't even try to stop himself from letting the young man know _exactly_ how little he appreciated having his concentration broken at 3:30 in the morning when he was hard at work trying to prevent another terrorist attack.

Abashed, Bates slunk back to his cubicle.

"Bit my head off," he admitted to Williams, at the next desk.

"Told you," Williams pointed out.

And Bates—who had been using a split screen to look for the umpteenth time through the security feed from the garden of The Gables the night before and, since that was becoming very dull, also the footage currently coming from the garden, all while keeping an eye (though not an ear) on the feed from Mrs. Hudson's kitchen (which seemed harmless enough; she was entertaining a rather battered-looking young woman, and had just seen her off to bed)—sank back in his chair, uncertain how to proceed.

He had wanted to tell Mycroft that something seemed to have gone wrong with the cameras at The Gables, since the current footage was eerily identical to that from the previous night—right down to nightingale's song at 1.14.23, and the owl's cry at 2.26.32.

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John crawled the last few yards to the tree line—not so much to take the weight off his knee, although the jump hadn't done it any good at all, as to keep his profile down. The clouds had mostly blown away now, and the moon, though lower in the sky than it had been, was almost full; he didn't want to be seen if Moran got to the upper staircase before he'd been able to put the rest of his plan in place.

The bracken, dotted here and there with slim young saplings—mostly maple and birch—provided some additional cover. John was out of breath, his chest heaving with the effort of pulling himself along the ground with an injured arm and leg, but the clamouring of the dogs in the distance reminded him that he couldn't afford to rest for even a moment, no matter how much the moving hurt.

He was done with any exhausted notion of simply climbing a tree and waiting for Moran to come and shoot his knees out. He had a mission, and he was going to do his bloody best to carry it out. It was the same one he'd given himself down by the river, when he'd heard old Mrs. Briers approaching and thought it was Moran and the dogs—but now he had a minute or two to get ready, and that could make all the difference.

The bigger trees lay mostly behind a screen of younger ones that had sprung up on the edge of the old lawn. John got to his feet again and, leaning heavily on the staff he'd dragged along with him, made for the first big tree that looked climbable—a medium-sized maple. He would have to scramble over several fallen logs and branches to get to it. That was just fine with him; he couldn't have asked for anything better.

In a spot between one of the saplings and one of the fallen logs, about fifteen feet from the tree he'd selected, John finally let himself pause.

His sides still heaving, he bent over and untied his shoelaces, then pulled them out of their eyelets and tied them together. He already knew they weren't going to be long enough.

The only things he had left to sacrifice were his pants, or the bandages from his leg or arm. He was damned if he was going to go naked if he didn't absolutely have to, and the gauze around his arm was too flimsy and sodden to be much use even if he could have got it off without fainting, so he unwrapped the bandage from his knee. It was wet and filthy, but that didn't matter; it might even provide a little camouflage. He tied one end of it to the laces and wrapped the other around the fallen log. That was all he had for a weight; he didn't know if it would be enough.

He didn't know if his improvised string would be enough, either: he would have liked more length, but even if he'd been willing to cut his boxers up, he was running out of time. The baying of the dogs was getting louder every second.

He tied the free end of the shoelaces to his staff and threw it as far as he could away from the path, downwind. Then, grunting with the effort of moving with his knee unwrapped and nothing to lean on, he stumbled towards the tree.

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The wind was cold. The moon was bright. The dogs were in full throat, clamouring and baying like foxhounds on a county hunt. And Jack Moran was riding behind them on the biggest, most headstrong high in his long and quite frequently toked-up and pleasured life.

He'd had an invigorating chase through the tunnels, followed by the most terrific charge of endorphin-releasing adrenalin when he'd thought the dogs had caught their prey. His discovery that there was no person inside the jacket and other clothing the dogs were tearing apart had been a letdown at first, but had actually proved to be a boon. The game wasn't over yet. There was more to come. Jack could have that pleasure-rush all over again, when the dogs really did track John down.

He told himself it was the victory he was savouring, not John's fate. Winning was always a delight, but to win at such a game— _the_ game, the greatest, the most dangerous game—well, there could be nothing to top it. No Olympian could feel more bathed in glory than John Sebastian Moran would on accomplishing this longed-for goal. It would be the crowning achievement of his life.

It was, of course, a pity that it had to cost Johnny _his_ life. Jack couldn't help feeling a twinge of regret about that. His boy, he'd been; such a fine boy. It was true that he'd never put on the height Jack considered essential for a man, that he'd become a doctor instead of a sniper, that—worst of all—he seemed to have chosen another man as a lover. (Though Jack was not quite so sure of that as he'd been before talking to Sherlock, and was not unaware that, in his most secret self, he found the idea as titillating as he claimed to find it repulsive.)

But whatever his shortcomings, John had shown real courage tonight. Courage, and endurance, and considerably more strategic thinking than Moran had expected.

That was his boy. Such a fine boy. It really was a pity. . . .

The pit caught Moran completely by surprise. The first dog went down with a terrified shriek; the two behind it were so close on its heels that they followed, yelping and yowling all the way down. Moran grabbed the last two and pulled them back just in time.

Breathing heavily from the effort, he pulled his torch out of his pocket and shone it down into the pit to survey the damage.

The cavity in the ground was relatively small on the surface—about eight feet across—but deep, with surprisingly steep sides. It was clear that the dogs wouldn't be able to get out by themselves. They were writhing at the bottom. One appeared to have broken its leg; it was lying on its side, struggling to get up but not succeeding. The other two were scrambling on and off each other's backs, snarling and growling and snapping at each other furiously.

Some men might have put the dogs out of their misery, but not Moran. They were valuable beasts—he had had them specially bred to his specifications and smuggled across the Channel, which had cost a small fortune; he didn't want to lose them if he didn't have to.

Another kind of man might have let himself down into the pit to lift them out. But not Moran. He decided to leave them to it for now and come back to retrieve them later—when he'd finished with John, and when he'd had time to go back to his car for some tranquilizer darts. The animals were wild with pain and confusion; he had no intention of exposing himself to their teeth while they were in such a state.

Jack whistled to his remaining dogs and cast around with the torch, looking for John's trail. The dogs picked it up on the other side of the pit. He'd jumped, then. Clever boy. It was a pity he was going to have to be killed, but there really wasn't any way around it. He and his friend had found his mother's body, and _that_ was a secret Moran was determined to keep quiet. It wasn't only the prison sentence he was so eager to avoid, though naturally that was a significant consideration; his greatest source of anxiety was his employer. No prison in the world could keep Jack safe from Moriarty if the man wanted to get at him, and from what he'd learned during his stint in Moriarty's "firm," death truly might be a better alternative than letting Jim Moriarty think you'd messed with him.

Johnny had crawled through the bracken towards a line of trees. It was quite easy to follow his trail, even without the dogs. Now, what would he have done when he got there? Climbed a tree? Or kept going? He couldn't have been sure of eliminating all the dogs with the pit, and he must be exhausted at this point—that bullet wound really had been bleeding quite a bit, even before this started. He must know his end was very near. Climbing would be his best option, then, if he could manage it one-handed. If he found a way to strap himself in he wouldn't fall when Moran shot him, and would avoid the fate he surely feared most, being torn apart by the dogs.

Moran proceeded carefully, his torch and gun at the ready. His heart was racing with excitement as he neared the tree line. The dogs in the lead, he made his way between the smaller saplings towards the first of the larger, climbable-looking trees.

His attention was on the tree, his torch searching it for his prey. The dogs were coursing side by side just ahead of him. They were scrambling over one of the fallen branches that lay across the trail when a log off to the side shifted slightly and the branch sprang up like the elastic young sapling it was, knocking both dogs flying.

Moran started back in surprise. John rose up out of the bracken and was on him in a flash. One well-aimed slash with his knife and Moran's gun fell from his hand. John kicked it away. Moran brought his torch down hard on John's knife hand, sending the knife flying, and followed up with a blow to John's injured arm, right across the wound. John gasped and fell backwards, somehow still managing a hook with his good leg that brought Moran down with him.

But only one of the dogs had been stunned by the tree when it sprang upright. The other gathered its legs under itself and got to its feet. Head down, a hair-raising growl rumbling in the back of its throat, it stalked towards the two men as they struggled together on the ground.

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Sherlock had reached the bridge when he heard Moran's whistle, followed by the frenzied baying of his dogs. A remote corner of Sherlock's mind registered the oddness of such enormous dogs making such a sound, and wondered if foxhound had played a part in their breeding, as well as Fila Brasileiro, but everything else in the man focused instantly on calculating how to get to John before the dogs did.

The sounds were obviously coming from the top of the hill, on the other side of the fence. Sherlock ran towards it. The gates across the road were locked. He should have been able to pick them open in a minute, but his hands were shaking and there were no minutes. He flung himself at the fence and clambered up it, unbuttoning his coat as he climbed, slipping out of it, throwing the beloved garment across the rusty barbed wire at the top and himself over that. The thick wool protected him from the worst of the barbs, though he took a few deep scratches anyway. He dropped the eight feet from the top and started running again as soon as his feet hit the ground, leaving the coat behind without a second thought.

He could see his way clearly in the moonlight. He was halfway across the meadow when he heard a wild barking and howling.

He'd always thought there was no connection between the emotions that sentimental people referred to when they spoke of their "hearts stopping" and any genuine action, or stoppage of action, of the physical organ actually beating in their chests. It seemed that was something else he'd been wrong about.

There was another whistle. The sounds lessened. Everything went very still.

So. John was dead, then.

 _I will kill Moran,_ Sherlock thought, numbly. _I'll find him and kill him and every one of those dogs, if it's the last thing I'm able to do._

The thought did absolutely nothing to stop the tsunami-wave of emotion that was sweeping over him. He couldn't see. He couldn't think. He had no idea how he was going to keep going, but somehow his feet kept moving anyway.

He was at the steps. He was up them. Then the barking and snarling started up again. He moved stiffly towards it.

The moonlight showed him a deep pit, and three dogs trying to get out of it. There was no sign of Moran or John. Something began to unfold in Sherlock's chest. His heart seemed to start beating again.

Then he looked up and saw John and Moran fighting at the edge of a line of trees, while a huge, brindle-striped dog stalked slowly towards them.

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While Mycroft was forcing himself to stay awake and Mrs. Hudson was putting Harry to bed, another old lady was fumbling with the tangle of sheets and blankets around her, trying to get out of bed and reach the phone.

She had stumbled back from the woods with her herb-friendly lantern darkened and only the moon to guide her, so terrified that, when she finally found herself inside her own house, she had forgotten what it was she had meant to do once she got there. Shivering, she got into bed and pulled the blankets up around her. After a while, warmed and numbed by forgetfulness, she fell asleep.

After another while—she had no idea how long—she woke. Her room was still dark, but moonlight was shining through the window beside her bed. Peering nervously out, she saw that the moon was low in the sky, just brushing the tops of the trees.

That wasn't right. It should be higher than that. It had _been_ much higher just a few minutes ago, when she was rushing home from the woods with something she urgently needed to do. What was it? Had she done it? She wasn't sure. She had been so frightened. She was frightened _now._ Why?

Her window was wide open—she always kept it open at night, fresh air was good for you. Her hearing had not yet abandoned her; she was only a little deaf. Far, far away in the distance, she thought she heard a sound like hounds baying.

Dogs. Moonlight. That nice boy from next door, John Watson. _That_ was it! He was in the woods. She had seen him. He had sent her home, telling her to hurry so his stepfather wouldn't catch her. But his stepfather would catch _him,_ if he wasn't careful, with the dogs. It had happened before; she could still remember it. She mustn't let it happen again.

And so she fumbled with her sheets, trying to get out of bed and to the telephone, wondering how on earth she could manage to convince the police that she wasn't just the crazy old lady she knew everybody thought her, and they really did need to come to the wood behind her house right away.

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Sherlock ran. Cutting across the old lawn in the most direct line, he found himself dodging between the slim trunks of young trees and beating his way through dead bracken, trying to scan the ground for something— _anything—_ he could use as a weapon, without actually taking his eyes off John. . . .

Who seemed to be losing the fight. He was on his back. Moran was kneeling on top of him, pinning him down. He'd stopped struggling. Sherlock could hear him groaning.

"Oh, Johnny." Moran's voice came clearly through the night. "This _has_ been fun. I'm really sorry it's over. But you know I'm going to have to—"

Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock saw what he'd been looking for—a good, stout stick. The part of his mind that never, ever turned off even when he wanted it to noted that it was almost certainly the stick John had been using as a cane. There were signs that John had lain in the bracken here, a string (his shoelaces tied together) and a length of dirty fabric (cut from his trousers; the bandage he'd applied to his leg by the river) tied to a log; he must have set some sort of trap—oh, yes, that sapling there, bent back till it was almost flush with the ground and kept down by the log; after setting that up he'd have laid a trail to that big tree with the low-hanging branches, wanting Moran to think he'd climbed it; then he'd have circled back through the trees and bracken to this place, chosen because it was downwind from his earlier trail and just far enough away from it that the dogs wouldn't catch his scent. . . .

Sherlock processed all that in a split-second. Later he would despise himself for having given even that much thought to anything except John's urgent need, but he couldn't help it, it was how his mind worked. And it was only a very small portion of his mind that was thinking about what John had done and why he'd done it; the rest was entirely focused on getting to his friend before Moran could kill him or do anything more to cause him pain.

Sherlock scooped the stick up as he ran. It was a sturdy one, ironwood, two inches in diameter, strong enough to have taken John's weight and then some. The dog was between Sherlock and John, waiting for its master's command, so intent in its focus on the bloodied man it had been chasing all night that it either didn't hear Sherlock coming or saw no reason to pay attention if it did.

Wielding the stick like a sword, Sherlock dealt the animal a curving blow to the skull, felling it with a single stroke. The stick shattered. Sherlock threw himself bodily on Moran—who was just looking up to see what was happening—and knocked him off John. He had his knee in Moran's back and his arm around his neck in a chokehold before Moran could do more than grunt in response. The sharp tip of the broken staff was pressed into the man's side like a knife.

Moran made a strangled sound. Sherlock tightened his grip around the man's throat and dug his makeshift knife in harder.

"This is going to hurt," he hissed in Moran's ear. "A lot."

"Sherlock." John's voice was weak. Sherlock flicked his eyes in his friend's direction. He was still lying on his back, his chest heaving, but his head was turned towards them and his eyes were open, watching.

"You all right, John?" Sherlock asked, tightening his grip a little more.

"Will be."

"Need anything?"

"I'm fine."

"You don't sound fine."

"Just winded."

"Your arm's bleeding."

"Been doing that all night. It's okay."

Sherlock dug his stick into Moran's side so sharply that the older man gasped.

"As I was saying," Sherlock remarked, turning back to his prisoner, "you can expect considerable pain. And it's going to last a long time. I'm going to do this slowly. _Very_ slowly."

"Sherlock," John said again. "What are you doing?"

"I have an excellent memory," Sherlock said, leaning close to Moran to make sure he could hear every word. "I've made an extensive study of human anatomy, including the nervous system; I know exactly how to produce excruciating pain any time I want to. And believe me when I tell you that you have made me want to very much indeed."

" _Sherlock!_ " John was struggling to sit up now. "What are you doing? Stop it. This isn't you."

"It's most definitely me," Sherlock said, tightening his grip on Moran's throat and digging his improvised knife in a little more. Moran made a strange, squeaking sound. His face was turning purple. Sherlock gave him a little shake.

"Not so much fun when it's happening to you, is it?" he hissed.

" _Sherlock!_ " Sherlock flicked his eyes towards his friend again. John was half-sitting, propped on his elbow; he didn't look as if he could get any farther. His face was deathly white behind the cuts and bruises. "Sherlock, _stop it. Now!_ "

"Why?"

"You're killing him."

"He deserves it."

"But not from you. Not"—John seemed to be suddenly short of breath himself—" _you_."

"Absolutely me." Sherlock's eyes glittered like a wildcat's in the moonlight. He tightened his hold a little more.

" _Sherlock!_ " John snapped. " _Now!_ "

Slowly, reluctantly, Sherlock loosened his grip. Moran gasped for air and started to cough. Sherlock released a little of the pressure on his back and side, but only a little.

"What did you do with them?" he demanded suddenly, turning away from John and back to Moran. "What—did—you— _do—with—them?_ " And he ground the tip of the stick into Moran's side again, underscoring the cold fury in his voice.

"Don't know—what—you're talking about," Moran gasped between coughs.

"John's medals, of course," Sherlock snapped. "The ones you stole from our flat. And—"

But Moran seemed to be choking again. It took Sherlock several moments to realize that the sounds had nothing to do with the now-somewhat-lighter pressure of Sherlock's arm against the man's throat. He was laughing.

"Johnny's medals?" he gasped. "Oh, that's rich, my dear chap. Quite droll!"

" _Where—are—they?"_

"Nowhere," Moran said, sweetly. "They never existed."

" _Liar!_ "

"Oh, you poor dear boy! Have you really been imagining all this time that Johnny's a decorated hero? I do hate disillusioning you."

"I know you took them from John's drawer. What did you do with them afterwards?"

"Nothing, old chap. Nothing at all. As I said, they never existed. Not that they shouldn't have, you understand: I brought that boy up to be a first-rate soldier—but he had to go off and make himself over into a snivelling, snot-wiping little doctor, and you won't find too many of _them_ bringing home the Queen's honours from the battlefield. I admit I had the same idea you did. I thought he'd earned himself something nice—I'd heard a rumour or two, here and there—and I won't deny I went through his room pretty thoroughly, looking for them. He's so famous now, thanks to your exploits and that blog of his, that they'd fetch a king's ransom, especially—well."

" _Don't lie to me!_ "

Moran squealed as the makeshift knife dug into his skin. Sherlock cut him off by tightening his arm around Moran's neck again, producing a terrible string of gagging, spluttering sounds.

" _Stop it, Sherlock!"_ John ordered, pushing himself with difficulty up to a sitting position and glaring at his friend. "Listen to me—he isn't worth this; I don't want you doing this to yourself; this isn't who you are. And anyway, he isn't lying. There weren't any medals in my drawer. I never had any."

Sherlock's grip on Moran slackened. He turned his face to his friend, his mouth a little open, eyebrows raised incredulously.

It was all the opening Moran needed. He drove his elbow hard into Sherlock's stomach and twisted his body, slipping out from the loosened chokehold and throwing Sherlock off his back in a single fluid motion that left the consulting detective on his backside looking up into Moran's face—and down the barrel of the very familiar gun the sniper had just pulled out of his pocket. John's gun.

"Well, well," Moran said softly. "How quickly the tide does turn. You really thought you'd hurt me there, didn't you, Holmes? And dear Johnny, trying to talk you out of it. It was quite amusing, really. That's why he never brought home any honours, you know, Holmes—he can't bring himself to do everything that has to be done, on the battlefield or off it. You needn't have bothered stopping your friend, though, Johnny—he wasn't serious about it. He barely touched me. I've suffered worse things from a sweetly smiling little woman than anything he did tonight, or would have done; your famous Sherlock Holmes is as soft as you are. Not that you didn't do well tonight, Johnny—you did. You surprised me. I'm proud of you, boy. But you don't like to kill; you lack the instinct for it. And there's no way to be a true soldier without that."

He had been backing up as he spoke, John's gun still trained on Sherlock. The man's hand was bleeding from the slash John had given it earlier, but the gun was perfectly steady.

"I don't lack it, though. So it's time to say goodbye. I'll take Holmes first, then you, Johnny. Say goodbye to each other, boys, and then to me."

John looked at Sherlock. Sherlock looked at John.

" _Vatican cameos,"_ both men mouthed at the same time.

Sherlock dropped and rolled sideways, hurling the rock his fingers had found in the dirt behind him at Moran's gun hand. It was barely more than a pebble, but it hit Moran hard on the cut across his knuckles and, for a moment, his aim wavered. The shot went wild.

John had already launched himself into a flying tackle. He put every ounce of his remaining strength into the leap and took Moran just above the knees.

Sherlock pulled himself out of his roll and onto his feet, not even pausing before starting to stride forward to help John pin Moran down and tie him up. He found himself watching in shock as John and Moran both disappeared from sight.

There was a shout, and another shot ringing out—and then a muffled sound that could only be bodies hitting the ground.

He'd had no idea they were so close to the ha-ha.

000000

Sherlock felt as if he were trying to run through black treacle. His legs were working as hard as they had all night, or harder, but everything was happening in slow motion and he didn't seem to be getting anywhere. It could have been an hour before he reached the top of the hidden wall, and another before his eyes took in what they were seeing—John's body lying entangled with Moran's at the bottom of a fifteen-foot drop.

Hour after hour seemed to pass, and Sherlock's eyes kept seeing it. He turned away from the wall and engaged in movement that felt less like running and more like wading through a gelatinous substance— _moonlight, congealed, surprisingly viscous_ —for what seemed like more hours and hours as he ran towards the stairs, and still his eyes kept seeing it. He didn't think he'd ever really see anything else again.

He got to the stairs at last and took them three at a time, slipping and sliding the last part of the way when the edge of a step disappeared in a scree of crumbled mortar and pulverized stone. There one minute and gone the next. Like John.

He couldn't be dead. Not John. Not _John._ Somebody else—anybody else, really—and it wouldn't matter so much. Oh, he'd be sorry if it were Mycroft or Mrs. Hudson or Greg Lestrade or even Molly Hooper; he'd be more than sorry, he'd grieve for them, he'd miss them terribly, he'd do anything to protect them—but John was different. They were _friends._

Friends in a way he could never be with his overbearing older brother; or with a motherly old lady who could have been his grandmother; or with a law-abiding policeman whose intelligence and sense of adventure, though better than most in his profession, were nowhere near what Sherlock needed in a companion; or with a lonely, love-struck young woman who was always struggling and usually failing to hide the embarrassing crush she still had on him.

Sherlock had one real friend, just one. He didn't have any others. Except for Victor, he never had.

 _I don't have friends._

 _Wonder why?_

Twelve, fifteen feet, the policewoman had said. John _would_ have to choose the highest place to go over.

A person could survive a fifteen-foot drop. It depended on what you landed on—rock, and you'd be done. Bushes or grass, you could survive. But would you walk away? What would survival mean to a man like John if he broke his spine and never walked again? Or if he stove his head in and ended up with brain damage? John, like Sherlock, would think death the kinder alternative.

But he couldn't die. He couldn't be dead. Not John. Not _John._

He could see the bodies now, lying in the bracken just ahead of him. One of the men was stirring, starting to sit up. Hope surged through Sherlock's whole being, mind and body.

But it wasn't John.

Moran got to his feet and took off in a stumbling, lurching walk, heading slowly down the meadow towards the drive. Sherlock ignored him. Nothing mattered except John.

He could hear sounds in the background but, for once, his ever-rational, ever-working CPU wasn't processing them. Everything had been reduced to images, a series of snapshots: John still lying motionless in the bracken, one arm flung out. Blood on his legs. Blood on his chest. On his outstretched hand and arm. On his face. In his hair. . . .

The background sounds were getting louder. Someone was shouting. Sherlock tried to brush his consciousness of these distractions impatiently away and couldn't, especially the shouting. Then he realized the voice was his own.

"John," he was yelling. " _John!_ Are you all right? Wake up. Wake up, John. You've got to be all right."

John's hand moved a little. His eyelids fluttered. He opened his eyes.

"Sherlock?" he said, groggily. "What happened?"

Sherlock couldn't seem to say anything. He couldn't find the words.

"We fell, didn't we?"

Sherlock couldn't get anything out. His tongue felt thick in his mouth and an unfamiliar wetness was blurring his eyes. It was the strangest feeling he'd ever known.

And then John lifted his head and looked around, and with much more force and clarity asked, " _Where's Moran?_ "—and Sherlock found his voice again.

"Not important," he said. "How badly are you hurt?"

The blood, he was beginning to realize, was mostly from cuts and scratches, and the sodden, dripping bandage around John's arm. But John had fallen fifteen feet. Onto what Sherlock now realized was a thick, springy layer of dead bracken—but still, fifteen feet. And there'd been that shot. . . .

"Of course it's important," John said, sitting up and rubbing the back of his head. He sounded a little dazed still. "He's armed and dangerous; we can't let him get away."

"Your gun's here." It was lying beside John. "He must have lost his own earlier, or he wouldn't have been using yours."

"He'll have another. And knives. You don't know him like I do, Sherlock; he's dangerous with just his bare hands. Where is he? And what's that noise?"

The noise was a combination of things: some that Sherlock could recognize now, but under them there was something else, a faint background thrumming he was sure he should be able to identify, but couldn't. His mind still felt fragmented and disordered, nothing in it working the way it was supposed to.

"Sirens," he said. "Someone must have called the police."

And the police must have had the key to the lock on the gate or a pair of cutters in their boot, because a moment later the night was filled with flashing blue and white lights as two cars came tearing up the drive. The beams of their headlamps raked across the meadow. In the sudden illumination Sherlock and John could see a tall figure stumbling down the field.

If anybody had been looking back at the ha-ha, they might have seen a long, grey shape emerge from the gaping hole at the base of the stairs—the hole that had once been covered by a grotesque fountain-head, and was still connected to the tunnel system on the level above by a steeply-sloping culvert. The shape was followed by another, and then—bloody saliva dripping from its jaws, and a damaged leg forcing it into a queer, lopsided gait—a third.

But nobody was watching anything except Moran.

The dogs loped down the slope, crazed with pain and confusion and their attempts to extricate themselves from the only partially blocked-up tunnels leading out of the pit. As the wind blew across the meadow towards them, they caught a bewildering and exhilarating blend of scents: their master's familiar odours, the exciting new tang of his fear and pain, and the mouthwatering smell of the blood of the man they'd been tracking all night.

The dogs knew what that blood tasted like; they'd gone mad for it back in the tunnel, when they'd torn apart John's clothes. Moran had got it all over himself when he was pinning John down. He'd made a particular point of leaning his weight on the dripping bullet wound he'd inflicted earlier, telling himself he was only doing it because inflicting agonizing pain was the quickest way of weakening his opponent and overcoming his resistance.

The police cars' doors were flung open; figures were piling out—Sherlock could pick out Greg Lestrade, Phil Anderson, and Sally Donovan among them.

"Oi, _you!_ " one of them shouted across the field at Moran. " _Stop!_ "

But Moran didn't stop. His hand moved towards his armpit. He was so far from the Yarders that none of them registered the danger.

" _No,_ " John breathed, and grabbed his gun.

" _John,_ " Sherlock said, urgently, all the pieces he'd been trying to trying to put together all night suddenly slotting into place with a certainty that defied the need for any further analysis. " _Not you._ _It shouldn't be you._ "

"Just the gun," John said, quietly, lining up the shot and firing. Something flew out of Moran's hand. The man let out a yell and fell to his knees, clutching his arm.

Greg Lestrade was running towards him, Donovan and Anderson just behind. John got to his feet and, gritting his teeth against the pain, began stumbling down the slope towards Moran, too, Sherlock running beside him.

And then the long, grey shapes appeared out of the shadows. Dazed, maddened, and utterly savage to begin with, the huge dogs threw themselves on the man who smelled of their prey's blood, their slobbering jaws clamping down on his limbs.

Moran's screams cut through the night, stopping Phil Anderson and Sally Donovan in their tracks.

Greg kept running. He had his gun out, but he knew he was too far away to risk a shot.

John was farther away than Greg. His gun was still in his hand. He hesitated for just a second, staring down the slope at his old enemy, his face grim.

" _John,_ " Sherlock said urgently again. John glanced at him. Something unspoken seemed to pass between the two men. Then John jerked his gaze back to Moran and brought the gun up. He fired once, twice, three times, and pushed himself into a stumbling run again.

When Greg got to Moran, John and Sherlock were kneeling beside him, putting pressure on the worst of the bites as he moaned in pain. They'd had to pull the bodies of the dogs away to reach him.

"I need your scarf, Jack," John was saying to Moran, who had the stunned look of a man going into shock. "I'm going to take it now so I can use it for a bandage."

Sherlock, who still had his around his neck, was already slipping it off. He handed it silently to John.

Greg had put in a call for an ambulance as he was running. He joined Sherlock in putting pressure on Moran's wounds, John barking directions. Sally and Phil caught up with them. Sally had run back to the car for a first-aid kit. They got it open and knelt down to help.

When there didn't seem to be any more need for so many assistants, Greg stood up and pulled Sherlock aside.

"What the hell's been going on?" he demanded. "Who is this man? What's happened to John? What's this all about?"

"His name is John Sebastian Moran." Sherlock spat the syllables out as if he didn't like the taste of them in his mouth. "He's a retired sharp-shooter from the Colchester Parachute Regiment, a gambler and small-scale drug-dealer and big-time exploiter of family connections—a general man-about-town. You can tell Mycroft that Victor wasn't killed by a terrorist. Moran thought he was shooting at me."

The police detective's mouth fell open a little.

"At _you?_ " he said, incredulously. Sherlock ignored this and continued speaking at rapid-fire pace.

"You'll find another body in one of the outbuildings at the bottom of The Gables' garden—Moran's wife, whose disappearance twenty-three years ago your incompetent colleagues in the Essex constabulary failed to treat with the gravitas it deserved, despite knowing that Mrs. Moran's husband had recently been the subject of a serious child-abuse investigation—which they'd also bungled so thoroughly that every policeman, social worker, and judge involved ought to be doing time for it themselves now. Moran recently began to worry that his old crimes might come to light, and was trying to eliminate the evidence—hence his alarm when he came to The Gables before dawn this morning and thought he saw me in one of the bedroom windows. Be careful when you approach the pillbox; its roof is loaded with several hundred pounds of high-quality explosives."

"Did you say 'pillbox'?" Greg asked, slowly. He had turned his eyes back to John, who was still bending over Moran and, with Donovan and Anderson handing him things out of the big first-aid kit from the police car, was bandaging up the last of the man's wounds. In the headlamps of the car, the maze of scars across John's body stood out clearly.

"The World War II bunker at the bottom of the garden."

"That's right, they _are_ called pillboxes, aren't they? I should have remembered that."

"Lestrade," Sherlock began, but Greg didn't seem to notice.

"Her husband, you said?" he asked, still looking at John.

"Second husband."

"Ah. I see."

" _Greg._ " Greg looked up, surprised by both the urgency in Sherlock's voice and his use of Greg's name.

"Not one word of this gets out," Sherlock hissed. "Moran might cooperate if you leave the first murder out of it—he has good reasons to try to keep that quiet—but even if he doesn't, _not one word in the press,_ unless her family agrees _._ Nor to Mycroft, either."

Greg looked at John again and nodded. There was a hardness in his face when he turned back to the group around Moran that neither Sally nor Phil Anderson missed.

"That's enough with the first aid," he said sharply. "You've patched the perp up; he'll make it to the hospital. But he can cool his heels for a bit while one of you helps John get a fresh dressing on that arm before the ambulance gets here. It looks like it needs it."

"That's okay, Sally," John said, as she looked fruitlessly through the kit for another bandage; they'd used them all on Moran. "It can do like this a while longer."

"No, it can't," she said, grimly, taking her own scarf off to wrap snugly over the sodden gauze around John's arm. "What the hell _happened_ tonight, anyway? You look like you've been to the wars."

"Long story," John said, shrugging. "I'll make a statement later, but we'd better get this man to a hospital now. Dog bites aren't something to mess around with."

The look Sally gave him was a mix of wonder and admiration. Phil noticed it, as he'd been noticing every look she gave the doctor as they worked. Why the hell wasn't the man wearing any clothes?

"Shouldn't we be charging Watson, sir?" he demanded, turning to Greg. "He may be playing the doctor now, but he's caused grievous bodily harm—he shot this man in the hand."

Sally stared at him in disbelief.

"Watson saved our skins," she said. "This bloke was about to shoot _us_."

"He couldn't have touched us at that distance," Anderson said, scornfully.

"Couldn't he?" she snapped. She had been watching John and Moran, and making her own deductions. "This is the guy who shot the Minister, isn't it?"

Greg nodded. Sherlock was watching Sally curiously.

"He must have done it from the edge of the woods. Like the—" she took a deep breath, and corrected herself—"like _Sherlock_ said. I've been thinking, and he's right—that's the only way it could have been done. So this bloke's a crack shot and he was drawing his gun; he could have hit any of us if Watson hadn't stopped him. And if you'd spent any time at the range at all, Phil Anderson,"—turning angrily on her former lover—"you'd know that was the most amazing shot you'll ever see. It must have been twice the distance I've ever seen anyone hit a moving target at, and it was incredibly precise—he shot the gun right out of his hand."

"That was a fluke," Phil grumbled, giving Sally a hangdog look. "Watson just got lucky. He's a civilian; he isn't even supposed to _have_ a gun, let alone fire one. He could have killed someone. For all we know, he was trying to."

A creaking, wheezing sound that could almost have been a laugh drew everyone's eyes to the injured man at their feet.

"Don't be a fool," Moran managed to get out, although his face was dripping with sweat and knotted with pain. "If Johnny'd wanted to kill me, he would have. He doesn't miss."

Then he drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and added, "All the same, m'dear boy, you should have gone for the kill shot."

"Not going to make it that easy for you, you son-of-a-bitch," John said flatly, pulling one of the bandages a little tighter and clamping it into place with a jerk. Then he tucked the shock blanket more securely around his patient, got to his feet and limped away, heading towards the cars.

Sherlock's eyes met Greg's again. " _Not one word,_ " he said, fiercely. And Greg nodded again, his face grim.

Sherlock turned his attention back to the first-aid kit and pulled something out of it before loping after John.

"Here," he said, handing him the second shock blanket.

"Thanks," John said, surprised, but wrapping it around his shoulders gratefully. "You think they've got a stretcher in the car?"

Sherlock was standing still, looking up at the sky. His mind had finally started to process what he'd been hearing in the background. The low, rumbling sound had been getting steadily louder for some time.

"Come on, everyone," Greg called to his team. "That ambulance is taking its sweet time. We'd better get these men to the hospital ourselves."

"I think," Sherlock said, to no one in particular, "that some of us are going to have a faster means of transport any minute now."

"Oh, Christ," John sighed. "Not _another_ helicopter!"

"Thought you were just making that up."

"Never could stand the things."

"We'll take it. It'll get you to a hospital faster than a car."

"I don't need—"

"Yes, you do. You fell fifteen feet. And you've been shot."

"It's not much more than a scratch. And speaking of scratches, you've got some nasty ones on your hands. If you got them on that rusty barbed wire on the fence, you should have a tetanus shot."

"Your 'scratch' is still bleeding."

"I keep knocking it into things."

"Like the ground, after a fifteen-foot fall?"

"I mostly fell on Moran."

"Looked more like he mostly fell on you."

"Into a lot of dead bracken. Pretty springy stuff; I expect we bounced."

"Or you wouldn't be alive and walking now. We want to make sure you keep doing that. You've heard of internal injuries? Delayed response?"

"Doctor, Sherlock."

"Sometimes," Sherlock said, darkly, "it's hard to tell."

"Sometimes," John said, with a hint of a smile, "it's hard to tell you're a sociopath—or someone who thinks he is, anyway."

"Even sociopaths look after their friends. They don't have so many they can afford to lose one. And in my case—"

But whatever he was going to say was cut off by the deafening roar of the helicopter landing twenty feet away.

"We should put Moran on that," John said. "The sooner he gets to a hospital the better."

" _Fuck_ Moran," Sherlock said, enunciating the syllables with precision. He took John's good arm and, half-supporting him and half dragging him, pulled him across the field to the helicopter door, John protesting all the way.

000000

TBC. . . .


	26. Chapter 26

Author's Note: Well, I didn't have this ready by last Friday after all. Or was it two Fridays ago? Or three? My apologies, truly—it's a very busy time of year, and I had far more trouble writing this than I'd expected to. But here it is at last, the end of the story. It's going to take three chapters to tell. I'm posting all three now.

My thanks, as always, to Fang's Fawn. She's been endlessly patient and generous with her time; I couldn't have done this without her.

Chapter 26 (Epilogue 1):

Twenty-eight hours later the skies were still clear. London in the early morning light looked bright and clean and new, but Sherlock was feeling thoroughly unsettled and on edge as a sleek, black car delivered him and John to the door of 221 Baker Street.

Just how Mycroft had found out what was happening when he did was a murky question that Sherlock definitely wanted an answer to, but not knowing had nothing to do with his nerves. He wasn't even inclined to feel any of his usual antagonism towards his brother over it: Mycroft's interference had, for once, been quite useful.

The helicopter had transported John to a London hospital in less than twenty minutes. A team of experts had been waiting when they got there, and John had received immediate attention. Sherlock's darkest fears had proved quite unnecessary: John had not expired from any hidden internal injuries, or from his obvious external ones, either.

Mycroft had even arranged for the usual formalities to be waived and Sherlock to be given regular updates about John's condition, which had kept him from harassing the nurses and destroying the waiting rooms while John was in surgery.

As a result, Sherlock knew almost everything he wanted to know. He knew that, while only John would have described the damage Moran had done to his arm as "not much more than a scratch," the surgeons expected him to make a full recovery from it.

He knew that, although a complete recovery might take a while, they had given John's knee an equally encouraging prognosis.

He knew that, as a result of either John's fight with Moran or their fall, John had a mild concussion and several cracked ribs, but they were nothing to worry too much about.

He knew that the shot he'd heard as John and Moran had plunged off the top of the ha-ha had been a misfire that had hit nothing—at least, nothing connected to John, which was all he cared about.

In short, Sherlock knew that John—whose condition really had worried him very much, even when the man was on his feet and pushing himself to treat Moran, and even more so later, when the adrenaline surge had finally dropped and he'd started to shiver convulsively during the helicopter ride—had been warmed up and cleaned up and stitched up and pumped full of antibiotics and painkillers, and had finally managed to get some much-needed rest. And now he was coming home, everyone having agreed that he would find it much easier to go on resting and recovering there than in the hospital.

Sherlock was thoroughly pleased with these outcomes. John had even had the necessary conversation with his sister, so they didn't have that ahead of them to worry about. But the detective's nerves were still jangling as the car pulled up to the kerb and he helped John out.

It would never have occurred to Sherlock to contact Harry about John's being in hospital; Mycroft had obviously taken care of that along with everything else. She had shown up with Mrs. Hudson while John was still in surgery, both women upset and wanting to know what had happened. Sherlock had had absolutely no idea how to begin explaining to either of them, especially Harry, and had had to invent an urgent call on his mobile (which wasn't supposed to be on in the hospital, probably wasn't working, and in any case wasn't in his pocket, as he hadn't yet got it back from the police) in order to escape down the corridor to another waiting room.

John had asked for him as soon as he came out of surgery, but Sherlock hadn't been able to do more than ask how John was feeling before Harry rushed into the room, distraught.

"Oh, _John,_ " she cried, "are you all right? What _happened?_ "

"Give us a moment, will you?" John asked, tipping his head towards the door, and Sherlock had actually found the grace to withdraw.

"Harry," he heard John say as he was leaving, "it's over. We found Mum's grave, at the house."

Harry gave a little cry, and John said, gruffly, "Come here." Sherlock, looking back over his shoulder as he closed the door, saw Harry kneeling beside her brother's bed, her hair brushing against his as John, sitting up more than was probably good for him, put his uninjured arm around her and pulled her in close.

Mrs. Hudson pounced on Sherlock when he reappeared in the waiting room.

"You bad boy," she scolded. "What were you _thinking_ of, letting John get shot?"

And then she pulled him into a hug, and he found himself with his arms wrapped around her, holding her as if she and John and everything else that mattered in his life would somehow vanish if he let go.

He had no more idea how to answer her questions than he'd had before, though, so once she started asking them he had to pretend that his non-existent mobile was buzzing again, and make another escape. He was undoubtedly going to catch it from her for that, once they were back at Baker Street and she'd got over her first flurry of fussing over John. But Mrs. Hudson's likely annoyance with him wasn't even a blip on his radar screen and had nothing whatever to do with his nerves as he helped John out of the car.

Tiredness probably _did_ have something to do with them: unlike John, he hadn't had any rest over the past twenty-eight hours, even after John was safely out of surgery and Sherlock had learned that he wasn't likely to suffer any permanent damage from his injuries. Sherlock had been keenly aware that he _needed_ to sleep, but he hadn't been able to let himself close his eyes.

He had another problem to work out, and until he'd found the answer to it, he wasn't going to be able to let himself rest.

He was not so far removed from the rest of the world that he wasn't aware that his usual way of dealing with certain kinds of things—by _not_ dealing with them—wasn't going to be enough in this situation. It was possible that John would be fine with that. He almost certainly wouldn't expect anything else. But Sherlock had found, as he thought about it, that his usual way of doing things wasn't good enough for _him._ John deserved something better than that. The problem was, Sherlock didn't know exactly what "something better" might be, or how to do it for him.

He'd given his full attention to this problem virtually every moment he'd spent waiting in the hospital. He'd borrowed Mrs. Hudson's phone and researched the subject quite thoroughly. The only answer he'd been able to come up with was so unsatisfactory that he wasn't sure he could bring himself to use it.

But he was going to have to do _something_ very soon; he really couldn't put this off any longer. He had to deal with it—for his own sake as much as John's, because he thought he might actually explode if he didn't get it over with. Though he also thought he might very well _implode_ if he actually opened his mouth and said the useless, banal words that were all he'd been able to think of, in spite of applying himself to the problem more or less non-stop for the past twenty-eight hours.

Mrs. Hudson must still have been asleep, because she didn't appear when Sherlock opened the front door. The limousine's driver offered to help, but John waved him away. With Sherlock to steady him, he made it into the house and, with a pause or two on the way, up the seventeen steps to the flat. At the doorway he stood still for a moment, looking around.

"It's . . . good to be back," he said. And it was just as well that Sherlock was standing behind him, because he wouldn't have wanted John to see his face spasm. He knew what John really meant—that he hadn't expected to see the flat again.

Then John limped over to his chair and flopped down in it with a sigh of contentment, and Sherlock went silently into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

As he was making the tea, he discovered that the milk was now significantly more off than it had been three days ago. He weighed his options and headed downstairs to raid Mrs. Hudson's fridge. She was probably still asleep, but she never locked her door.

He was halfway down the seventeen steps when someone knocked on the front door. He ignored it. The knock was repeated, a little louder.

"Could you get it, Sherlock?" John called down to him. Sherlock frowned and paused with his hand on Mrs. Hudson's doorknob.

"If I don't answer, they'll go away," he called back.

"Might be a client."

"Boring."

"Might be an interesting client."

"They'll come back."

The knock came again, followed by a sleepy and somewhat irritated, " _Coming!_ " from the vicinity of Mrs. Hudson's bedroom, John's voice saying tiredly, "For God's _sake_ , Sherlock," and a grunt as, presumably, John started to push himself out of his chair.

Sherlock moved promptly to the door and opened it. He found himself looking into the wrinkled face and rheumy eyes of Major Amberley.

"Mr. Holmes," the Major said, his voice trembling. "Would Captain Watson be at home?"

Sherlock hesitated. John appeared at the top of the stairs.

"Major Amberley?" he said, obviously as surprised as Sherlock was. "Why are you keeping him standing on the doorstep, Sherlock? Ask him in."

Sherlock stood back and let the Major come in.

"Captain Watson," the Major said, when he had expressed surprise and concern over John's battered condition, and had been seated on the sofa and offered tea (by John), and had declined it (which was just as well, as there still wasn't any milk). His voice was still tremulous, giving the uncomfortable impression that he was on the edge of tears. "I have come to make a confession to you, sir. I have been so ashamed of myself. I'm so very sorry; I truly am."

"What on earth—" John began, but he was cut off by another knock on the door downstairs. Sherlock made no move to answer it. The Major gave a soft bleat of distress. Whoever was at the door knocked again, more loudly.

" _Coming!_ " Mrs. Hudson called again. Sherlock could tell from the soft fall of her feet on the hall carpet that she hadn't finished dressing yet and was wearing slippers.

The Major began to speak again, more rapidly, as if trying to fit in what he had to say before they could be interrupted again.

"I'm afraid have been less than fully truthful with you, Captain Watson. Indeed, one thing I told you the other day can really only be described as—it pains me so _deeply_ to say it—a _lie._ Or perhaps you might say 'a half-truth,' but it comes to the same thing, doesn't it? A miserable deception. I can't think how I let myself do such a thing; it has been preying on my mind ever since. Such a dishonourable way to act—and to _you,_ a man I have admired so much, and who deserves so much better! I have been utterly ashamed of myself, ever since the words came out of my mouth. I really am so terribly sorry."

"That's all right," John said, baffled but certain that the Major couldn't have done anything very wrong. "What is it, exactly, that you meant to say?"

While they were talking, Sherlock could hear the door opening, followed by the deep rumble of a man's voice, and then Mrs. Hudson's, saying cheerfully, "I'm only just up, but I thought I heard them coming in. Sherlock! John! Are you there? It's that nice Inspector Lestrade from Scotland Yard."

This was followed by the sound of feet on the stairs before Lestrade appeared in the doorway.

"Sorry to bother you again," he said, looking from John to Sherlock and back again. "But I need a few more details from both of you to fill in those statements I took yesterday. And it seemed like a good time to bring you back your phones, and this."

He handed Sherlock a plastic bag with something bulky in it. Sherlock peered in. For a moment, his eyes gleamed.

"It's in pretty bad shape," Greg said, looking at him curiously. "But Donovan thought you'd want it anyway. She's the one who noticed it hanging over the fence, as we were leaving."

Sherlock pulled the object out of the bag. It was his beloved Belstaff, dirty, torn, and tattered. Apparently unmoved by its condition, he fished a hand in one of the pockets. The muscles in his face relaxed a little, but whatever he'd found, he seemed content to leave it there. He dropped the coat over the arm of his chair and flopped into it, in spite of the fact that Greg was still standing.

"Our phones?" he said, putting out a hand.

John, who had got to his feet again when Greg came in, looked at Major Amberley, who had done the same, and cleared his throat.

"Major," he said. "This is Inspector Greg Lestrade from Scotland Yard. Greg, this is Major Amberley—the man I told you about, whose medals were stolen from the museum in his house in Lewisham."

"Not _my_ medals," the Major protested. "Not _mine_ at all! As I was saying, I'm terribly afraid I was less than fully and completely truthful with you the other day, Captain Watson. You see, when I told you—"

Greg had been digging out Sherlock's and John's phones.

"Sorry I didn't see you there, sir," he said to the Major, handing the phones to Sherlock and shaking the Major's hand. "I'm very glad you're here. This saves me quite a bit of time—I was going to come down to Lewisham later today, to talk to you about your medals."

The Major shrank back a little.

"Not _my_ medals," he said again, shaking his head from side to side. "I'm afraid I was _most_ misleading about that. You see—"

"No, sir," John put in. "You didn't mislead me. You never said they were _yours_ ; in fact, you said very clearly that they had belonged to someone else. Only,"—John hesitated, not liking to remind the old man of his lapse of memory, especially in front of Sherlock and Greg—"your record book had been taken with them, so you couldn't tell me the names of the men who'd won them, or the man who'd sold them to you."

The Major dropped his eyes to the floor, his shoulders drooping.

"And _that,"_ he said, "was where I allowed myself to . . . well. I did not intend to lie to you, Captain Watson; I hope you will believe _that._ When I came here the other morning, my only wish was to tell you the whole story. But you were so gracious to me—so very _kind_ —and you took such an interest in my little museum, and, you see—well, I think I confessed to you on that occasion that I had already become quite a keen—I believe the word is 'fan'—of you and your blog, and I found that I simply could not bring myself to tell you the truth: that I had lost something so . . . . Oh, dear, this is so _very_ distressing! I can't seem to bring myself to tell you _now._ But I _must._ You see, the medals were . . . were . . . That is to say, they belonged to . . . Or they _should_ have belonged to . . . ."

Sherlock had been busying himself with plugging his phone in to charge. The screen was badly cracked, but it was possible that the phone itself was still working; it would be interesting to see whether it had survived being thrown out of the pillbox and smashing into the ground at Moran's feet. Now he leaned forward in his chair, watching the Major with a sharp-eyed interest entirely unlike the bored disdain the old man had elicited from him before.

"I believe the word you are trying to say, Major," he said quietly, "is _you._ "

"No, _no!_ " the Major fluttered his hands in distress. "Not _me!_ They belong to Captain Watson here—to _you,_ sir," he said, turning to John and entirely missing the sarcastic curl of Sherlock's lips at this unconscious confirmation of what the consulting detective had said. But the sarcasm faded and a curious gentleness softened Sherlock's face as he watched John's, which had gone very still.

Then John blinked several times, and Sherlock knew without really knowing _how_ he knew it that John was struggling to keep his emotions in check. It made perfect sense, really—Sherlock had already worked out who the medals must have belonged to, and why they would matter to John—but what astonished him was how easily he understood what the emotions actually _were_ that he could read in John's face. It was almost as if he was feeling them himself.

And he was feeling like this over . . . _medals_. Medals! Little bits of metal, meaningless, irrelevant—only they weren't irrelevant at all, because they meant something to John. The thought that his friend would be happy to see them made _Sherlock_ feel happy—ridiculously, absurdly happy—and that was so strange that he couldn't really understand it at all. He was never _this_ happy about anything except a new case or a new deduction. . . .

"They belong to _John_?" Sherlock did not have to be looking at Greg Lestrade to know that his eyes had gone wide with astonishment and his mouth stayed open a little once the words were out of it. "But . . . they're engraved, but neither of the names is . . . . Oh, I see. Of course."

"You've _seen_ them, sir?" the Major turned eagerly to him. "Do you mean to say, you have actually—"

" _Really,_ my dear Inspector," a familiar voice drawled from the doorway. "If _that_ is the best the pride of Scotland Yard can do by way of deduction, Britain is in even worse shape than I had imagined. How could it _possibly_ take so long for a Detective Inspector in the Metropolitan Police to realize that items of a military nature may be passed down as readily from the distaff side of a family as from the patronymic?"

Greg flushed.

"Really, Mycroft," Sherlock imitated his brother's tone without looking up him. "Are you sure you're in a position to hold forth about your superior understanding of patronymic conventions? Quite a lot of trouble might have been avoided if either you or the minions you had doing your research for you two years ago had remembered that there's more than one way _names_ can be passed on, as well."

It was Mycroft's turn to flush.

"Indeed," he said, tightly. "That is something I have already taken up with my staff. They won't be making _that_ kind of error again—not if they value their jobs."

"It's not their fault, Mycroft," John put in. "I was registered under a different name at school, and on the National Health. You didn't need to show a birth certificate in those days."

" _Nevertheless,_ " Mycroft said, darkly.

A corner of John's mouth twitched, and Sherlock, seeing it, was momentarily amused. Of course, he thought—John _would_ like the fact that Mycroft hadn't known everything about his past. He'd probably assumed that both Holmes brothers had known everything there was to know about John Watson all along.

 _But_ _ **you**_ _should have known,_ he reminded himself, and the amusement vanished at once.

The Major had been looking from Greg to Mycroft to Sherlock to John in bewilderment. Now he turned back to Greg.

"But have you really found them, sir?" he asked, eagerly. "Captain Watson's medals? His mother's medals, I mean. Well, not your _mother's_ precisely _,_ of course, Captain Watson,"—turning back to John. "Indeed, I was not lying when I said I could not remember the names engraved on them—I'm afraid I have always had a poor head for names—but when I began enjoying your blog so very much, I looked up your family, you know—I have friends who sometimes help me with things like that—and—this was before they were taken—when I was looking at the medals one night, I realized that the names on them matched up with the ones I had just been told were your mother's father's, and his father's. It was quite a thrill to discover such a connection to you! I made up my mind at once that I would return them to you. If only I had done so immediately! But one thing after another seemed to keep me from making the trip across town, and then, when I finally went to get them out of their case to bring to you, I realized they had disappeared."

"You mustn't worry about it, sir," John said. "It's really quite all right."

Greg Lestrade took a package out of the inner pocket of his jacket and handed it to the Major.

"We've found them, sir. Or at least, we found these in a flat belonging to a man we have reason to suspect was not their rightful owner. Can you identify them as the ones you reported stolen?"

The Major unwrapped the package with trembling hands. He had difficulty with the last layers; Greg leaned over to help him.

Out of the paper slid two heavy, beribboned, white-enamelled crosses with silver-gilt edges, the scarlet circles in their centres surrounded by green laurel-wreathes and embossed with crowns proclaiming them both to be Distinguished Service Orders, once the kingdom's second-highest award for gallantry under fire.

The Major's hands were shaking more than ever as he picked them up and checked the names engraved on their suspension bars. Then he reached over, took John's right hand—the left was still bandaged and in a sling—and pressed them into it.

"They're your grandfather's and great-grandfather's, Captain," he said. "I want you to have them."

"You're sure, sir?" John asked, around the lump in his throat.

"Nothing would make me happier," the old man said, his lips trembling a little. He pressed them together firmly and patted John's hand. " _Nothing,_ " he said again. They sat looking at the medals together, while everyone else in the room looked on silently.

After a minute or two, the Major looked up at John and said, "He didn't stay in the army, did he—your grandfather?"

"No," John said, feeling thoroughly bewildered by all this interest in his family. "He was a minister. I think he was a chaplain during the war."

"A brave choice," the old man said, approvingly. "As courageous as any other way of serving—including the RAMC, of course. He had a remarkable record; he certainly earned his decorations, as did his father. You knew about the medals?"

"Yes," John said, quietly. "I can remember seeing them when I was small. I've always wondered what happened to them."

"Do you have your father's still?"

John shook his head.

"I've never known what happened to that. I expect my stepfather found another place to sell it."

The old man shot him a surprisingly keen look from those faded, rheumy eyes.

"I'm so sorry, my dear boy," he said, softly. "That was a terrible thing for him to do."

John didn't answer. Sherlock's hand went to the coat over the arm of his chair. It hovered there for a moment. Then he reached over to the bookcase beside him, picked up his phone, and switched it on. Remarkably, the battered screen lit up. He watched John's face with one eye as he typed.

 _Where the hell are JOHN'S?—SH_

Mycroft had been standing beside Greg Lestrade, watching the exchange of the medals with bemusement. His phone buzzed. He pulled it out, read the message, and smiled sarcastically.

 _In his chest of drawers, I would imagine,_ he wrote back. _Really, little brother, you're as dull as our dear Inspector today.—MH_

 _He said he's never had any.—SH_

Mycroft's eyebrows went up.

 _Modesty,_ he typed back. _Not a quality you'd be likely to recognize, Sherlock.—MH_

 _Moran said the same thing, and he was under considerable duress at the time. I checked John's drawers; nothing there. Not even the usual campaign badges.—SH_

Mycroft frowned. His thumbs flew across his phone's keypad.

A few moments later, Sherlock's phone buzzed again.

 _Conspicuous Gallantry Cross recommended for award 2010. Never received?—MH_

 _Evidently not.—SH_

The frown deepened. The typing resumed at a furious rate. Sherlock saw his brother's pursed lips form the words, "inept military bureaucrats," and felt a surge of something almost like affection for him—along with certainty that the bureaucrats' error would soon be overcome. Not that John was likely to care very much—Sherlock felt equally certain that John's own decoration would mean far less to him than the ones the Major had just put in his hand—but Sherlock was not about to let that stand in the way of seeing his friend get what was owed to him.

"Well," Greg said eventually, "I'd better be going, then."

John looked up.

"What, now, Greg?" he said. "Thought you wanted some more details for our statements?"

"I can do that later. I've got a meeting to get to now."

"All right, then. Thanks for everything, mate."

"Any time. Or, actually, let me rephrase that— _not_ any time. Preferably not _ever._ I really don't want to have to take a statement like that from you again."

"I'm with you there."

Both men smiled.

"I'm sure you could do with something to eat and a rest, Captain," the Major said, getting up. "So I'll be getting along, too."

"Come back anytime," John said. "I mean it. Really."

"I'd be delighted. And you must come down to Lewisham and have another look at my museum when you're feeling fit again."

"I'd like that very much."

"Come whenever you like. No need to call first."

John got to his feet. The Major tottered towards the door. Greg offered a hand to steady him down the stairs. Sherlock, to John's surprise, uncurled himself from his chair, picked up his battered coat, and headed after them.

Mycroft put down his phone in time to see his brother shaking the coat out and slipping it on.

"Take that to my tailor's," he said. "You can tell him to put it on my bill." Sherlock tipped his head in acknowledgement as he vanished down the stairs.

"I owe you a great deal, Dr. Watson," Mycroft said, softly, as he buttoned up his own coat and stepped towards the door. "If you ever need anything I could provide, you have only to ask."

"Thanks, Mycroft," John said, smothering a yawn. "Right now all I really want is some breakfast, and then maybe a bit of a kip."

"Mrs. Hudson will undoubtedly be providing the former for you shortly. There's a most delightful smell filling the stairwell. I suspect she's baking scones."

"Did Harry stay with her again last night?"

"I believe so. You can tell your sister that her personal possessions have been retrieved from Moran's flat—computer, jewellery, etc. And diaries; I believe Lestrade mentioned some old diaries. She can get them back from the Met as soon as they've finished building their case. Goodbye, John—and remember what I said. I actually meant it."

At the bottom of the stairs, Mycroft found Sherlock talking in quiet tones to Greg, who was holding something in his hands.

"Thanks, mate," Greg was saying. There was a considerable amount of surprise in his voice, as if Sherlock had just done something quite unexpected. "I'll make sure John and Harry get them back, of course, when we're finished with the case. I'll catch hell if the Commissioner hears about you disturbing a crime scene like that, but I'm glad you didn't leave them there. If Moran _had_ blown the place up, we wouldn't have had any way to pin this one on him at all."

"I was more concerned," Sherlock said, sounding indifferent, "with securing the identification of the body. You'll find the ring is engraved with both her name and her husband's—her _first_ husband's—in full. And the locket, though that's only a monogram."

"Yes, of course, the ID is always the most important thing—especially for the family, yeah?"

Sherlock said nothing. Greg studied him, considering a number of things.

"There wasn't anything else, was there?" he finally asked.

"A badly corroded watch. Some bits and pieces of clothing. And all the usual bones and teeth—but surely you've seen it yourself?"

"Yeah." Greg rather wished he hadn't, especially since he had learned from both men's statements that John _had._ The thought of his friend seeing his own mother's body in that condition was unnerving. "But I meant, was there anything in the locket? No photograph or anything? It's a bit odd, it being empty like that."

Sherlock smiled seraphically.

"Of course not, Greg," he said, as if remembering Greg's name was a sufficient demonstration of his own guileless innocence.

"Mm-hmm," Greg said, watching as Sherlock spun on his heel and took the stairs three at a time. "Oh, well," he muttered under his breath. "If there _was_ something else, it won't be anything that matters for the case. And he'll have taken it for John."

"Are you suggesting, Inspector," Mycroft asked as he reached for the doorknob, "that my brother might be indulging in _sentiment?_ "

"Yes," Greg said, thoughtfully. "I believe I am."

"I'm afraid," Mycroft sighed, with only a trace of the usual irony in his voice, "you might be right."

"It's not such a bad thing, you know," Greg said. He had first met Mycroft Holmes quite a few years before, when a young vagrant he had been getting to know a little had overdosed, and Greg had called the number he'd found on a card in the youth's pocket. He had often wondered since how many of Sherlock's problems could be traced straight back to his brother's influence—and, if so, who the brother's went back to.

Mycroft let out another sigh. His eyes were hooded and his voice heavy when he answered.

"Perhaps you're right."

000000


	27. Chapter 27

Chapter 27 (Epilogue 2):

By the time the tea was finally made—and there _still_ wasn't any milk, so it had to be black, which wasn't the way either of them really liked it—Sherlock's nerves had set in again. But it had to be done. He had made up his mind about that back in the hospital, and the conviction that this was something he simply _had_ to do hadn't left him since. If anything, the Major's visit had intensified it; if that doddering old man could do this, so could he.

He perched on the edge of his chair, leaning forward, and cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"John," he said. "There's something . . . "

He stopped and cleared his throat again, then steepled his hands carefully under his chin.

"Something . . . I want to . . . _need_ to . . ."

He stopped again. John looked at him curiously. Sherlock closed his eyes for a moment, inwardly groaning in frustration.

Such hackneyed, trite, inadequate words were about to come out of his mouth—the sort of ritualized verbal gesture he despised from the very core of his being. But it had become clear to him that there was no getting away from the need to say _something_ , and while he'd been giving his most focused and concentrated thought for the past twenty-four hours to what it could be, he hadn't been able to come up with anything better than this. " _Sometimes, little brother,_ " Mycroft's voice seemed to whisper in his ear, " _platitudes are all we have to fall back on._ "

John studied his face, an odd expression on his own.

"Spit it out," he said.

Sherlock's left leg had begun to jitter wildly, as it sometimes did when he was deeply uncomfortable with the territory he was wading into. He tried unsuccessfully to make it stop.

"I . . ." Another pause; another attempt to clear his throat. God, how much more ridiculous could he make himself? But it didn't matter. John had more than earned this, and Sherlock was going to cough the words up, no matter how humiliating he found them or the business of getting them out.

"I didn't know. I _should_ have known _._ I should have observed you _much_ more carefully, and come to _much_ more complete and accurate conclusions. But I didn't. So I didn't know—anything. At Baskerville, when I put that drug in your coffee. Or last night," (the inaccuracy was an indication of how off-balance Sherlock was feeling) "when I dragged you out to that bunker, when I made you look—" He took a deep, shuddering breath. "I had no idea what I was doing. And I'm . . . sorry about that. I truly am."

John's face was a study in wonder.

"Thanks," he said, sounding to Sherlock's ears tired but, surprisingly, not in any way annoyed by the banality of his flatmate's words. "Don't beat yourself up about it. You didn't _make_ me do anything. And I wasn't giving you a lot to go on, you know. It's . . . not something I've ever really wanted to talk about."

 _You shouldn't have had to talk about it,_ Sherlock thought, his leg still jagging. _I should have_ _ **known.**_

"It's all right, really," John went on. "At least we know now. It's—" He choked a little and had to clear his throat, swallow, and look away—"hard, to think of her dying like that, but, in some ways, it's also . . ."

His voice trailed off. His left hand was balled tightly into a fist. He focused on straightening the fingers out, one at a time, and keeping them that way.

"Easier, too?"

John looked up in surprise. Sherlock was watching him keenly.

"To know she didn't abandon you?" Sherlock added, quietly.

His rich voice was deeper even than usual—string bass, not cello, on the low notes. His hands were still steepled under his chin. It occurred to him in an unexpected stab of self-knowledge that the gesture was protective; he was using it to hide the fact that he didn't know what else to do with them. That seemed strangely unfair to John, whose hand was now shaking again, so he unsteepled them and rested them on his legs instead. The left leg was still jittering.

"Yes," John said. "Yes, it is. That seems incredibly selfish, but . . ." His voice trailed off again.

" _John._ " The intensity in his friend's voice made John look up again sharply. "You know how little value I generally place on sentiment. Perhaps you'll think I'm the last person who should attempt to judge what is or is not _selfish_ for you to feel, but believe me when I tell you that I've given this subject my full attention over the past twenty-four hours, and I am quite certain that, if anybody else had been placed in the situation you were and then had learned what you learned yesterday, they would be experiencing _precisely_ the thought you have just ascribed to yourself, along with many others. And that includes,"—he swallowed, but forced himself to continue—"me."

John opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He was wondering if he had fallen asleep. The pain medications had had some strange effects over the past twenty-four hours; perhaps this was one of them.

"Of course," Sherlock went on, "I'm aware that I am, in most people's eyes, already a monster of selfishness, so perhaps—"

" _No,_ " John interrupted him, startled out of his own introspection by this unexpected glimpse of a side to Sherlock that most people would never have believed existed. "No, not that. You can be irritatingly self-centred—"

"I know."

"But a monster? _Never._ "

The strange, light eyes gleamed for a moment, and the long fingers re-steepled themselves under the sculpted lips, the steeply-sloping cheekbones and tapered jaw.

"You are, as always, more generous than you should be, John, but on this occasion I'm glad of it—"

"You're always glad of it, you bugger." John was feeling a decided need to shift the conversation onto more comfortable ground. "You profit from it endlessly."

"Very true. My point, however, is that, while you might perhaps choose to dismiss my comment on the grounds that I am too inherently selfish to be able to judge what is or is not 'unbelievably selfish' thinking in you, you'd be mistaken. If there is one thing a self-centred person is able to recognize instantaneously in another, it is selfishness. Nothing will irritate the egotist more than someone whose own self-centredness prevents him from meeting _his_ needs. I am unquestionably such an egotist."

"You like to say you are," John put in, softly. Sherlock smiled a little, but continued.

"The corollary, however, is that my selfishness leaves me equally well-equipped to recognize a truly generous nature when I meet one, and I can say with absolute certainty that, in many years of observing those around me—almost invariably with distaste—I have never encountered a man less capable than you, John, of responding to anyone's death in a way that could possibly be described by an objective observer, or indeed by anyone other than you yourself, as _selfish._ "

John flushed.

"No," he said, flicking his eyes away. "It's good of you to say so, but . . . no."

There was a long pause, while John seemed to be watching the fire burn and Sherlock watched John's face, trying to decode the particular meaning of the tightness around his friend's mouth and the darkness in his eyes. He had reached no definite conclusions when John spoke again. What he said took him by surprise.

"In the meadow, when Moran was drawing on Lestrade and the others—you said, 'John, not you. It shouldn't be you.'"

"Yes."

"You didn't want me to kill him."

"No."

"Why?"

"I thought—" Sherlock hesitated for a moment—"I thought you would regret it later. You had stopped me when I was choking him. I realized that could simply mean that you wanted to protect me from the prosecution that would undoubtedly follow if I did everything I wanted to do to him—but there was also the tone of your voice during that exchange while I was locked in the pillbox to take into account. You know this sort of thing isn't my territory at all, and I don't pretend to fully understand everything I heard, but I thought the way you were speaking seemed at times to suggest more complex feelings than simply hate."

John found the fire blurring a little, and blinked to clear his vision.

"In any case, I know you are not a man who is truly capable of hating, John. Of anger, yes—but not of genuine hatred. No matter what Moran had done to you, or your sister, or even to your mother, he was a man who had occupied for many years the place of a father to you. I didn't think you could live with yourself if you killed him."

"I . . ." John shook his head, as if to clear it, too. "Thank you," he said at last, all but inaudibly. When Sherlock spoke again, his own voice was almost as low.

"That's also why I stopped myself, when you asked me to. But nothing, believe me _nothing,_ has ever been harder for me."

John looked up in surprise.

"Why on earth—? Oh, of course. Victor. Christ, I'm sorry, Sherlock, I haven't been thinking, I should have—"

"Don't be ridiculous, John. Victor and I were friends in university—good friends, but nothing more. Not family, nor—despite what Donovan and Anderson undoubtedly think—lovers."

"I know that."

"Of course you do."

There was another pause. Then, to John's astonishment, Sherlock looked down at his hands, swallowed, and went on:

"That friendship was an entirely new experience for me. We met by chance one day in the University Library. We were both looking for Sir Humphry Davy's Bakerian Lecture on the chemical agencies of electricity, and fell into conversation about it. I knew a good deal more on the subject than he did, but instead of being annoyed that I did, he seemed pleased, and sought me out afterwards to continue our discussion. I was in my second year. He was a post-graduate student with a wide-ranging thought and many interests. He seemed to enjoy my company, and I was surprised to find that I enjoyed his. His mind was quite different from mine, but I found it a . . . novelty to spend time with someone who was neither infuriated nor repelled by my way of thinking, and who was not tedious to talk to."

"He must have been a very interesting man."

"Yes. He had extensive knowledge in many areas I had never thought to look into, particularly the arts. I hadn't yet worked out what my career would be, so I hadn't begun to narrow my focus to those fields most useful to me; I found his conversation broadening and stimulating. He was keen on athletics, too: we sometimes fenced together, or boxed, or went for long runs early in the morning or when we had finished our studies at night. At the end of term he invited me to visit his family in Norfolk. I had never had such an invitation before; I went, gladly. That's how I came to be familiar with those paintings Lestrade thought had been stolen from Astor Mews."

Sherlock fell silent then. John watched him curiously.

"What happened?" he finally asked.

Sherlock looked down at his hands again and rubbed at one of the nails. Then he stopped and placed them firmly on his legs, pressing down hard. John realized that the man's leg, which had calmed down while he was talking about his own egotism, was jittering badly again. He wasn't sure Sherlock was going to answer—but after another long pause, he did.

"He . . . I didn't expect it, but . . . I was quite young, and . . . naïve, I suppose. Mycroft thought so, anyway; he laughed his head off about it afterwards. Not that I told him, but of course he found out; he always does."

"Victor wanted more."

"Yes."

"And you didn't."

"Precisely."

"He didn't take it well."

"No."

"And you felt badly about it afterwards. You thought it was your fault the friendship ended."

Sherlock leaned back until his head was resting on the back of his chair, and closed his eyes.

"I . . . suppose so. He said things that . . . Well, he was right. Or almost right; perhaps not fully. I couldn't feel what he wanted me to, but I do _have_ emotions, of course. I'm just better than most people at controlling them, and I prefer that they be controlled. At the time, I didn't know how to explain myself and didn't understand what would happen if I couldn't. He reacted angrily, and what he said . . ." His voice trailed off.

"Hurt."

Sherlock tipped his head in acknowledgement.

"I didn't let myself think about it for a long time," Sherlock went on, more quietly still. "I told myself I had deleted that time from my mind. But I hadn't, not really. I was angry, and I used that anger to . . . help make me who I am today. But when I found myself in Victor's house in Chelsea, I remembered looking at those paintings with him on that trip to Norfolk—everything he'd said about them, how much he'd cared about them. I knew Lance was cheating him, as well as lying to the insurance and the police—Victor would be incapable of lending himself to a scheme like that, as incapable as you would be—and I thought . . . No, that's the wrong word. I wasn't _thinking,_ John, not properly—but I _felt_ something. I didn't even know what it was, except that it wasn't anger. Not with Victor, anyway. That took me completely by surprise, that I didn't feel angry with Victor any more."

"You didn't want to tell Lestrade what Lance was doing because you didn't want to hurt your old friend."

"Those paintings belonged to him. It would not have been possible to separate him from his partner's misdoings. Victor was a prominent public figure whose name had been incessantly in the news since he took on that portfolio, thanks to all the fuss about the Olympics these days—yes, John, I'd noticed. I have no interest whatsoever in either politics or the Olympics, but I do follow the news when I'm looking for a case, and of course Victor's name would stand out to me. A scandal like this would have destroyed his career."

"And if Lance's scheme had come to light, Trevor would not only have lost his job, he'd have found out that the man he'd trusted as his life-partner was willing to make some of his most valued possessions disappear from their home and then lie about what had happened to them."

"There wasn't anything I could do to stop that. Lance had already done it."

"But Victor didn't know about it yet. And you didn't want him to find out. At least," John went on, with a sudden burst of understanding, "you didn't want him to find out because of _you_."

Sherlock looked down at his hands again.

"I—" He paused. "Well, perhaps. But I'm telling you all this because of something else, something that happened yesterday, to me, when I stood in the doorway of that room and saw him lying there, dead. It was—I'd never—a body has never had an effect like that on me before."

He stopped again, clenching his hands suddenly and pressing his fists against his legs. The left one was still jittering wildly.

"Of course," John said, softly. "Of course you felt something then. Anyone would."

"I don't know how to describe it."

That he wanted to was taking John's breath away.

"Try," John suggested, glad to be distracted from his own concerns by this unusual development. "What do you remember?"

Sherlock was sitting rigidly, the only movement that leg twitching and jittering.

"Mostly confusion." His face was an expressionless mask. "My mind felt utterly confused. Overwhelmed."

"You say 'mostly.'" John leaned forward to hear better. "So there was something else?"

"There was . . . " Sherlock's voice was so low that, even leaning in, John had to strain to hear him. "Sadness. I felt . . . sad."

"Of course you did. That's natural, Sherlock."

"For _me?_ "

"You're human."

Sherlock looked down at his hands clenched on his thighs, and unfolded them carefully. His leg was still jittering, though a little more slowly than before.

"Most people don't think so."

"Since when do you care what most people think?"

John was expecting a smile at that, or at least a tip of the head in acknowledgment, but Sherlock's face remained immobile.

"There's more."

"Go on, then."

"I felt . . . sorry . . . about what had happened to Victor, of course. But I was expecting that. I knew what I was going to see before we went in; Mycroft wouldn't have gone to all that trouble to send you to me if it had been anyone else. By the time I saw him, I should have had those feelings under control.

"But I didn't. I stood there looking at his body, and instead of noticing clues and evidence, there was just this overwhelming sadness—not only because he was dead, but because of what had happened all those years ago. I kept thinking about the last time I'd seen him. And I felt . . . regret for what I'd said. Or perhaps not so much _what_ I'd said, since I couldn't have given a different answer, but for the way I'd said it and how he'd taken it. I felt . . . pain, for having caused him pain and spoiling a friendship I had enjoyed."

The corner of Sherlock's mouth twitched up at last, as if he were trying to smile. "There's sentiment for you. What would Mycroft say?"

"Mycroft is no more immune to feeling than you are," John said, quietly. "That's why he mocks it. That's why he mocks _you—_ because he knows he cares a great deal about you, and it makes him vulnerable."

There was a bitter note in Sherlock's laugh.

"Only you would think so, John."

"I don't think it. I know it."

There was another long pause.

Then, in a low, fierce voice that took John completely off-guard, Sherlock said, "When I say I am accustomed to controlling my feelings, I mean that I literally turn them off _._ Or perhaps, more accurately, I turn _myself_ off—I disconnect myself, shut myself off from them. I learned how to do it a long time ago, and I perfected the technique after Cambridge, after . . . well. I _have_ emotions, of course; I know they're there, under the surface; but I don't let them touch me—so I _don't_ feel what everyone else feels. I don't let myself.

"Or I didn't. It's been harder to keep that distance lately. I knew something was wrong with you after Baskerville. I knew it was my fault. I knew I should be asking you about it, but—I didn't know how, and I . . . was afraid of what you'd say. Then I went to Victor's house, and saw those paintings, and remembered what had happened before, and there was that terrible sadness and regret. I thought nothing could be worse than that.

"But last night—" He stopped, and cleared his throat again. "Last night was—"

He pushed himself abruptly out of his chair, turned his back on John, and began to pace up and down in front of the window.

"It's okay," John said, softly. "I didn't mind. I was glad to do it for you."

Sherlock whirled back to face him. The mask was completely broken; his eyes were wild.

"Worse, so much _worse,_ " Sherlock snapped, the words coming out like machine-gun fire. "I've never felt anything like that before _at all._ I could hear everything that was happening outside that pillbox. I knew Moran had shot you. I didn't know how badly you were hurt, but I knew you _were_ hurt, and I couldn't get to you to help you, and then you offered to play that—that—I refuse to call it a _game—_ with him, and . . . keeping my thinking clear wasn't just difficult anymore, John, it was _impossible_. Every kind of feeling was flooding across my mind, and _I couldn't do anything about it_. I tried every technique I know, but nothing worked. I _had_ to think clearly, it was imperative that I be able to use my mind properly, but I couldn't; all I could do was _feel._ And I couldn't make it stop, not any of it at all."

"Sherlock—" John started, but the man paid no attention. He dropped into his chair again and ran his hands roughly through his hair.

"And _I still can't!_ " he ground out though his teeth. " _Nothing_ is working! My mind isn't functioning the way it's supposed to; I can't _think_ properly anymore, not through all this _feeling_ ; it's driving me crazy. I'm at the end of my rope; I will literally go insane if I have to go on like this. I've got to make it stop; there's _got_ to be a way."

"Sherlock—" John tried again, but it was like trying to stop a hurricane.

"And you—you _must_ know what it is! Your mind and mine are quite different, but even if you don't reach the deductions with yours that I used to be able to with mine, you still manage to _think—_ and compared to most people, you don't do such a bad job of it. You're a doctor. You're a soldier. I would have thought that would make you handle emotion in something like the way I do, but it doesn't: you're _always_ feeling things, you let yourself feel them, I believe you _want_ to feel them, but you can still function; they don't overpower you like this. So I need you to tell me, John—how do you do it? _H_ _ow do you do it?_ How do you _feel_ so much all the time, without being completely overwhelmed by it?"

John stared at him, stunned. He had no idea what to say.

"I _don't_ ," he finally choked out. "You _know_ I don't! You saw me, back at the pillbox, when I saw—"

He had to stop for a minute to steady himself. Sherlock was watching him intently.

"Not _overwhelmed?_ " John went on when he could speak again. "Of _course_ I'm overwhelmed! I wanted to _kill_ Moran yesterday; you know that. I wanted to shoot him; I wanted to let the dogs tear him limb from limb, so I could watch him bleed out and die. And _I still do._ I hate myself for wanting it, but I don't know how to make myself stop. You thought my feelings must be complicated? You're damn right; they're complicated as hell. In his fucked-up, bat-shit-crazy way, I think Jack actually did care about us once—my mother, and me, and even Harry, though he was never much good at showing that. And before everything went pear-shaped, he made us all care about _him._ He taught me everything I know about things I care about deeply, things I've built my whole life around—and a shitload of crap about other stuff I wish I didn't know at all. I don't really give a fuck anymore about anything he did to me, but the bastard made my mother's life a living hell. And then he killed her. And left that note that made us think she'd . . . ." He choked again, and looked back at the fire, his jaw tight, his hands clenching and unclenching.

" _John_ ," Sherlock said softly, but he had no idea what else to say. He felt helpless.

With a single sweep of his arm, John knocked everything off the table beside him. The mugs were still rolling over the rug as he pushed himself out of his chair, picked the table up, and threw it across the room. It hit the wall with a crash and broke, the legs shattering. He turned back to Sherlock, breathing hard, his eyes glittering.

"I would love to break him like _that._ I wish I _had,_ and damn the consequences. So I couldn't live with myself? Right now, it seems like anything might be easier than living like _this._ So yeah, I feel things all right, and I'm no more in control than you say you feel right now. That's _human_ , Sherlock. That's the way people are, when they come up against something that's just too much for them to deal with. But you know what? That's what _makes_ us human. Feeling that much isn't something you should even _try_ to stop. _And I don't want you to stop it. I_ _ **need**_ _to know you feel like that, too!"_

Sherlock leaned forward abruptly. His eyes were silver, opaque.

"You said you wish you'd killed Moran. Did you really mean that?"

John sank back down in his chair, suddenly exhausted.

"Yes. No. Of course not. I want it so much I can taste it—to do to him even a little of what he did to us. But I don't want to live with what that would do to me. I don't want to become _him._ "

"I was wrong, then," Sherlock said quietly, more to himself than to John. "I shouldn't have stopped it."

"No, of course you weren't wrong, you idiot! Don't you understand what I'm saying? You were absolutely _right._ You have no idea how I hate being such a bloody open book to you, Sherlock—but it's just as well for me that, most of the time, I am. You knew exactly what I was thinking before I fired at him, and you were right: right about how I'd feel about it afterwards, right to stop me from going there. I'm grateful to you. Really, I am. I've been telling you all this so you'll know you're not the only one who's a crazy, fucked-up mess right now. But I'm not going to feel that way forever, and neither are you. I'm just not myself yet, you know? But I will be. Just give me some time, and I will be. And so will you."

"I meant," Sherlock said, and his voice was like raw silk dipped in indigo: dark and soft, but nubbed with something John had never heard in it before, "that I shouldn't have stopped _myself_."

"What are you talking about?"

"I told you that was the hardest thing I've ever done, John—stopping what I was doing to him, when you told me to. I've never felt that _enraged._ Moran thought I was faking it; I wasn't. All I wanted was to hurt that man: to make him scream, and then scream again—louder, longer, more. And it wasn't because he'd killed Victor; I'd completely forgotten about Victor. If I'd thought it would give you any satisfaction, John, any resolution, any peace, I'd have tortured that man without hesitation, I'd have made him die screaming for mercy, I'd have made it as slow as I possibly could—drop by drop by drop. But you told me to stop. So I made myself stop. And then I stopped you. But I got it wrong. I'm,"—he swallowed, hard—"sorry."

And there they were _again_ , those stupid, inadequate words. But there wasn't anything else to say.

John watched the raw emotion flickering across his friend's face, and felt his eyes misting over. He closed them to hide it.

"Thanks," he said. "You didn't get it wrong. You got it just right."

Eyes still shut, he reached out a hand blindly to take Sherlock's—the left one, which was still trying to control that jittering knee. The leg stilled. Sherlock watched his friend's face, the moist lashes betraying his reason for keeping them closed. He hesitated—then, succumbing to instinct, placed his right hand over John's and wrapped his fingers lightly around it, letting the gentle pressure speak for him.

The two friends sat like that, wordlessly, until they heard Mrs. Hudson's feet on the stairs.

"Boys?" she called. "Boys! Harriet's awake now and wants to see you. I've got scones in the oven and the kettle's on; why don't you come down and have some breakfast with us? Or if John can't make it, we could bring it up there."

"I could do with something more than scones," John said, laughing a little self-consciously as he pulled his hand away. "I'm famished. How about a proper breakfast, Mrs. H.?"

"I'm afraid I'm out of eggs, dear," she called back, still only halfway up the staircase. "Bacon, too. I was planning to go to the shops yesterday, but what with everything that was going on, I never got there."

John sighed, weary but apparently resigned. "I'll go to Tesco's then," he said, starting to get up.

Sherlock felt a rush of emotion that, for once in his life, he did not even want to deny. He put a hand on John's shoulder and pushed him back into his chair.

"That's all right, Mrs. Hudson," he called down the stairs. "I'll do the shopping. John, you and Harry get started on the scones, and we'll have a good fry-up when I get back."

He pulled on his tattered coat and trotted down the stairs. When John looked down at the arm of his chair, a heavy, squared-off, beautifully engraved bronze cross was lying there, shining in the sunlight that was streaming through the window. The crimson ribbon unfolded when he picked it up. A name and rank were engraved on the suspension bar: "Captain John J. Watson." In the circle on the other side was a date: 1982.

He turned it over and over in wonderment, amazed not so much at the thing itself—although it was his father's Victoria Cross, and meant even more to him than his grandfather's and great-grandfather's medals that the Major had pressed into his hands—as at the man who had thought to retrieve it for him.

000000


	28. Chapter 28

Author's note: This is a revised version of the chapter I posted last night. My apologies to anyone who read that one—when I looked at it this morning, I wasn't happy with the writing, and decided it was better to repost than to leave it as it was.

Chapter 28 (Epilogue 3):

 _Eleven weeks later. St. Bart's, two hours before dawn:_

Sherlock was perched on a stool with his feet up on Molly's lab bench, playing with a squash ball and thinking. John was beside him, trying not to fall asleep.

Sherlock tossed the ball from one hand to the other, back and forth, over and over—thinking, thinking, _thinking._

He'd had almost all the pieces of his plan for some time now. He knew what Moriarty wanted, what he was going to try to do. He knew how Moriarty was going to do it. And he knew how he was going to respond. He'd made all the arrangements with Molly, with the homeless network, with Mycroft. The last details had been worked out earlier in the day.

There was just one piece missing. He'd been putting off making a decision about it—and putting it off, and putting it off—but he was keenly aware that he couldn't keep doing that much longer. That piece was the most important one of all: John.

It had been almost three months since that business down in Essex. Moran was still in hospital, awaiting trial and—Sherlock hoped viciously that it was costing him the maximum possible of distress and pain—trying to learn to walk again. The police and the Crown were putting the final nails into a rock-solid case against him. There was little doubt that, once he got out of the hospital, he would spend what was left of his life in prison. Assuming, of course, that Moriarty didn't arrange for him to be bumped off first—but Sherlock thought that his plan for dealing with Moriarty made that unlikely.

John's arm and knee were mostly healed. He could walk without a cane now. He could even, as the events of the past twenty-four hours had shown, run through the streets handcuffed to Sherlock's arm, without any obvious after-effects.

But Sherlock was considerably more aware than he had been three months ago that it wasn't just John's physical well-being he needed to keep an eye on—and he was far less confident in his ability to come to accurate conclusions about his flatmate's needs than he had been in the past.

John _seemed_ all right. He was looking more rested. If he was still having nightmares, Sherlock hadn't heard them. He wasn't even dodging his sister's texts; in fact, he was talking to her more regularly than he ever had before, and—to Sherlock's frustration, since it had meant losing John's company on those occasions—had even gone out to dinner with her two or three times.

But Sherlock couldn't help worrying that he was missing something. He had missed so _much_ before. And there was the disturbing but unavoidable fact that his mind was no longer working in exactly the way it used to. He no longer knew whether he could trust all the observations and deductions he made with it or not.

At first, in the immediate aftermath of that night in Essex, he had been afraid his beloved mind had actually _broken._ Naturally, he had tried to fix it. He had done everything he could to force it to reset to where it had been before, to delete the memories of the things that had changed it. His efforts extended well beyond that conversation with John on their first morning back in 221B; in spite of everything John had said, Sherlock had continued to try to fix what seemed so _wrong_ in his thinking—the sense of disorientation was so disturbing, he couldn't help it. He had even tried to delete the things he'd learned about John.

The days when he was wrestling with this project of deletion had been difficult and dark. It was during this period that he'd set up Operation Lazarus with Mycroft.

While they were planning it, the one burning thought in Sherlock's mind had been that _this_ time, _nothing_ must happen to John. No more kidnappings. No more games. No explosive-laden vests, no hallucinogenic drugs, no giant dogs—or anything else that might harm John in any way.

Moriarty, Mycroft had learned, was the spider at the centre of a vast criminal network that would take time and ingenuity and effort to bring down. Sherlock was the obvious person to take that on. A few months ago, he would have dragged John along with him without a second thought. Now, the thought of exposing his only friend to that kind of danger was unacceptable.

But Sherlock was well aware that, as long as John was his friend, he'd be exposed to danger whether he was actually with Sherlock or not. Moriarty would go after him, if only to get at Sherlock. And even if they succeeded in taking down Moriarty himself, there would always be _somebody_ left who would know that the best way to stop Sherlock was simply to target John.

And so, with great reluctance, Sherlock had come to the conclusion that the only way to protect his best friend from the dangers of being Sherlock's friend was for them not to _be_ friends anymore.

There would have to be a separation, a falling-out—a very public one, that everyone who had ever heard of them would know about. But how to make that happen? Sherlock had given John every reason to give up on him in the past, and John had not risen to the bait. It was impossible to imagine anything Sherlock could do that would make John break off their friendship. And it had to come from John—if it seemed to come from Sherlock himself _,_ Moriarty would undoubtedly guess that the break was just a front.

Unless. . . . Unless. . . .

If John believed that Sherlock had deceived him. If John believed that Sherlock was _dead._ . . .

It was _almost_ the perfect plan. It certainly dovetailed with everything Sherlock knew Moriarty wanted—including the fact that losing John's friendship would, indeed, burn Sherlock's heart out. But that was better than losing John himself. At least this would keep him alive.

It was a plan Sherlock was only able to make because he was trying so deliberately _not_ to remember everything that had happened that night at Victor's house in Essex.

But, after three months of trying, he had to admit that his deletion project hadn't worked—and he couldn't help suspecting that there was a very good reason why it hadn't. His memories of that night were acutely painful, but they brought with them something he wasn't nearly so eager to be rid of: a new and different way of experiencing the world.

If he had had to describe the changes he was aware of in himself, he might have said that it was as if he'd developed the ability to see parts of the spectrum that had always been out of the range of his perception, or had discovered an extra eye in the back of his head that let him see in multiple directions at once. The memories that were flooding his mind and the feelings they brought with them were disorienting and difficult to process, but they threw new shades of colour and light on everything around him. For the first time in his conscious memory he had at his fingertips a way of understanding—or at least of beginning to understand— _feelings_ as well as _facts._

The result was breathtaking. He suspected that, if he could just get accustomed to this new and different way of seeing, it would help him in his work. How could a man who based his life on observation and deduction _not_ be helped by having a brand-new source of information opened up to him?

But he wasn't even close to having accustomed himself to these new perceptions yet. They left him feeling out of kilter, disoriented, and uncertain whether or not to trust the observations he was making.

And not knowing . . . complicated things. It complicated _everything_ , really, but especially the plan he'd made with Mycroft and Molly during some of his darkest, black-it-all-out-and-forget-it-ever-happened days. The plan that, if he pressed the buttons on his phone right now and set it into motion—and he was going to have to do that very soon—would begin with John's phone ringing as he sat here beside Sherlock for the last time.

And now that Sherlock had given up trying to delete his memories of that night in Essex, he could remember vividly his own feelings when he'd seen John lying at the foot of the ha-ha, covered in blood—when he'd thought John was dead.

Once, Sherlock would have brushed aside with contempt the idea that _his_ mind and John's could ever work the same way. But his own response to Victor's death and the events that followed it had made him question how well he understood his own mind. It had cost him dearly in pride to reveal this to John, but his need to understand what was happening to him, coupled with the odd feeling that he _owed_ John something, had driven him relentlessly until he had finally dropped the barriers of his own reserve and asked the man he trusted more than anyone else _what_ this thing was that he was experiencing, and how he could control it. And John—whose medical knowledge Sherlock trusted absolutely—had made it clear that he considered this a normal response; that he, too, was experiencing, if not _exactly_ the same mind-shattering disruption, then certainly something very similar. It was an idea that Sherlock had found astounding, but also impossible to dismiss.

And that raised the terrifying possibility that the anguish Sherlock had felt when John went over the ha-ha was exactly what John would feel, if Operation Lazarus played out according to plan.

Sherlock knew he had experienced that intense sense of loss for only a few minutes at the most—but those minutes had felt like hours and days and weeks of agony. Was it possible that he was going to make John feel that kind of pain for _actual_ hours and days and weeks? Or months? Even years?

And that pain of loss was only the beginning of what John might feel. There were other frightening possibilities, too—in fact, more than possibilities; Sherlock was beginning to think that they were closer to certainties. John would believe that the friend he'd risked his own life so many times and in such painful and terrifying ways to save had chosen, inexplicably, to throw that life away. He would think his sacrifices had not been valued.

He would think that Sherlock had chosen to kill himself in front of him, as if _wanting_ to cause him the maximum amount of pain.

He would think he should have seen it coming, and should have been able to do something to make it stop.

He would not have to identify the body—their plan had covered that—but he would have to see it. He would have to talk to the police and make a statement. And when the police finally let him leave, he would find himself having to go back to 221B without Sherlock.

Sherlock thought about how he would have felt, doing that, if John really had died three months ago. Going back would have felt . . . wrong. The flat would have felt . . . empty. He would have felt . . . He couldn't even put a word to it. The whole idea appalled him.

John probably wouldn't sleep at first. He wouldn't even try to. But when his body finally demanded rest and he couldn't stave it off any longer, would he find himself having nightmares again?

Sherlock didn't really think there was any question about it.

Remembering Baskerville, he shifted uncomfortably and jerked his legs off the lab bench. John had fallen asleep. Sherlock watched him intently, thinking how little he had known about this one real friend of his before that night at The Gables, and wondering what else he didn't know— wondering what the world, and he himself, really _looked_ like from John's eyes.

He remembered that John had said he didn't really care anymore about the things Moran had done to him. He assumed that meant the beatings, the deprivations, the frightening midnight chases through the woods—even the attack by the dogs.

What John _did_ care about still was what Moran had done to his mother. Well, that was natural—he had cared a lot about his mother; the stories the old lady next door had told had made that clear—and Moran had killed her.

But even that wasn't what John really got choked up about. That, Sherlock remembered, had been the letter—the letter Moran had left on the kitchen table, that had made John and Harry think their mother had abandoned them, that—the old lady next door had been sure John had realized this—had made it look as if she might even have killed herself.

What was it John had said to Moran that night at the pillbox? _You didn't give a shit what that would do to us._ What _had_ it done to him? Sherlock had no idea, but he knew John thought it was worse than any of the other kinds of pain Moran had inflicted on him.

And it occurred to Sherlock that, if John were ever to learn the full extent of the deception Sherlock had practiced on him—if he were ever to find out that Sherlock was, in fact, alive—he might see very little difference between that and Moran's letter.

Sherlock thought about that for quite a while. And then he thought about the man he had first met here, in St. Bart's—the injured and isolated man who had lost everything he cared about but had still somehow found the generosity and unselfishness and patience to put up with Sherlock's notable refusal to practice any of those qualities, and so had let them build this . . . whatever it was, this friendship or substitute family they had made with each other in the old house in Baker Street.

And then he thought again about John watching him jump, and about John going back to 221B, to an empty home again.

It was intolerable.

"John," he said, shaking John's arm—the good one—quite roughly. "John, wake up. There's something I've got to tell you, something I've got to do, and I'm going to need your help. . . ."

The End

Notes: Thank you, all of you wonderful readers, for your patience in sticking with me while I've been writing this. It's taken every scrap of free time I could find for the past two and a half years. I hope you've enjoyed it!

If you have, I would really appreciate hearing from you about it. I'm grateful to everyone who's taken the time to read this story, but especially to those who have taken the time to post a review or write a PM to let me know they liked it. It really does make all the difference.

And now, a huge round of applause for Fang's Fawn, please! Her thoughts, ideas, and advice have been invaluable while I was writing this; she's really been the greatest support imaginable, and I could never have done it without her. But I've gone my own way on more than one occasion, so please don't hold her responsible for anything you didn't care for. Any mistakes are entirely my own fault, not hers.

I'd like to express my gratitude for Ariane DeVere's transcripts of the episodes, particularly "The Hounds of Baskerville" and "The Reichenbach Fall," and for wellingtongoose's tumblr blog about the peculiarities of John's military and medical careers, which was very helpful as I tried to think through what his background might have been. I'd also like to say how grateful I am for all the fanfic writers whose stories I have enjoyed over the past few years, and those who have encouraged me along the way. You know who you are. From the bottom of my heart—thank you!

Most of all, of course, I'm grateful to the creators and actors of the BBC Sherlock series, and to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, without whom there would be no Sherlock Holmes or Doctor Watson at all. I'm sure most of you recognized the original stories mine is based on. For anyone who didn't, though, and was wondering, here's a breakdown of what I owe to Doyle (and a few other sources):

My title, "The Empty Home," comes from "The Adventure of the Empty House," as does much of the plot about the locked-room murder—though the victim in the original story is Ronald Adair, not Victor Trevor. The murderer in both cases is the same. I've read many versions of Sebastian Moran's character in fanfic; I tried to make mine echo the original Moran as Doyle describes him in "The Empty House": Mayfair gambler, big game hunter, and crack shot extraordinaire. The original Moran is supposed to have crawled down a drain after a wounded man-eating tiger, a story I gave to my Moran's ancestor—but the nickname "Tiger Jack" and the idea that his full name might have been John Sebastian Moran isn't ACD canon, but comes from the "Flashman" books by George MacDonald Fraser. I was reminded of it by Fang's Fawn's terrific story, "An Innocent Man."

Doyle's Moran kills Ronald Adair while Adair is alone in a locked room by a seemingly impossible long-distance shot through a window that was only just cracked open, a fate I gave to Victor Trevor. Later in the same story, Doyle's Moran tries to kill Sherlock Holmes by shooting at what he thinks is Holmes' face in the window of 221B; it turns out he's only shot a plaster bust that was being carried around the flat by Mrs. Hudson, at Holmes' request. (Apparently she managed to do this while crawling on her knees, to keep her head down below the window level—something I've never quite been able to picture!) I twisted that scene into Moran shooting at Sherlock's portrait and killing Victor by mistake.

Since I started my story long before Series Four aired, I had no way of knowing that Victor Trevor was going to show up in an actual episode as Sherlock's childhood friend. My apologies to those readers who have been distressed by this departure from BBC canon—I'm afraid there's really nothing I can do about it now! The original Victor Trevor appears in "The Adventure of the _Gloria Scott_ ," in which Holmes describes how they became friends at university and how he visited the Trevor family's country home for several weeks between terms. I kept the visit, but left out Trevor's father's unsavoury history and the murders that follow.

Moran's attempts to buy The Gables, his attack on Harry, his hacking and theft of her computer, and his theft of her mother's diaries were all inspired by the events in "The Adventure of the Three Gables," though I gave the ownership of the house to Victor Trevor, and let Harry play the parts of both Mary Maberley, the old woman who is chloroformed when her house is robbed, and the young writer whose _roman_ _à_ _clef_ is stolen in order to keep the story revealed in it from becoming known.

The fate of John's mother was suggested by "The Adventure of the Retired Colourman," in which a Major Amberley murders his young wife, whose body is found in an old well hidden under a dog kennel on his property. I hope no one was disappointed that the only things my Major Amberley has in common with his namesake are his name, rank, age, and a home in Lewisham. His military museum was inspired by my rather desperate attempt to find a way to twist the phrase "retired colourman" (house painter) into "retired-colours man" (a collector of retired military "colours," or regimental flags). That in turn led to the plot about Moran's theft of John's family medals, which as far as I know has no precedent in Doyle's stories.

The case of the missing paintings that Sherlock pursues independently while John is first looking into the Major's problem in my story was inspired by the tantalizing "Case of the Two Coptic Patriarchs" that Doyle's Holmes is finishing up at the beginning of "The Adventure of the Retired Colourman," while he sends Watson off to Lewisham to begin investigating Major Amberley's complaint. We never do learn what that case was about; I decided to make it about art.

John Frederick Lewis's "The Hosh Courtyard of the Coptic Patriarch" is a real painting in the collection of the Tate Britain. One critic has argued that a watercolour study by Lewis in the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery may also show the Coptic Patriarch's courtyard [Dioscorus Boles, "How They Saw the Copts: John Frederick Lewis' 'The Hosh Courtyard of the Coptic Patriarch' Painting" (21 September 2011).] If Boles is right, then there really are _two_ "Coptic Patriarch" paintings, a fact I find ridiculously pleasing.

"The Most Dangerous Game" that the Moran in my story longs to play is based on a 1924 short story of that name by Richard Connell, and the 1932 movie that was made from it. The dogs, of course, are not only from the Connell story but also straight out of John's drug-induced terrors in "The Hounds of Baskerville"—and from the original ACD story, "The Hound of the Baskervilles."

The name of the village and nature reserve near The Gables, St. Mary's Wold, is based on Agatha Christie's St. Mary's Mead in the Miss Marple stories. The nature reserve is loosely based on Danbury Commons and Blake's Wood, a large reserve just east of Chelmsford. I moved it north and west, in order to put it on the World War 2 hardened defense line that runs through that part of Essex. The old estate is based (even more loosely) on Copped Hall, a country house near Epping that burned to the ground in 1917, after which the grounds were neglected and fell into total disrepair, until they were bought by a conservation group in 1995. The grotto and underground tunnels are my own embellishment, but are based on features that actually can be found on other estates in either Essex or Kent.

John's medals: The Distinguished Service Order was the second-highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy given to British officers before 1993, when it was replaced by the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross. The only higher award is the Victoria Cross. The British Army does not give an award for being wounded, which—to answer a question I've already been asked—is why John doesn't have something like the American Purple Heart.

Soldiers not getting their medals because of bureaucratic red tape and ineptitude is an actual problem, both in Britain and elsewhere. The story of the soldier who sold his decorations to support his family is real.

One guest reviewer has asked why, if John's mother's father's medals were found in Moran's flat, Lestrade didn't just say so. I'm sorry if this point was confusing. The answer is that Lestrade didn't know that they were John's family medals, because he didn't know John's mother's maiden name. He may have suspected a connection to the rest of the case, but they were reported missing by the Major, and so he returns them to the Major for identification. Lestrade never sees the third medal, John's father's Victoria Cross, which he would certainly have been able to identify, because Sherlock takes it out of John's mother's locket before giving the locket and wedding ring to Lestrade at the end of Chapter 26.

And . . . that's it, I think. If you've actually read all these notes, you must be as compulsive as I am! Thanks for giving them a shot and for sticking with my story. If you enjoyed it, I'd really love to know—please do take a moment to write a review, or drop me a PM. It makes all the difference—and would make me very happy.


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